Re: User's manual for Cantera on Python?

[Thomas Fiala]

Mary,

you can have a look at the on-line documentation:
http://cantera.github.com/dev-docs/sphinx/html/

If you just start off with Cantera for Python, I recommend using the new module relying on Cython. The old (legacy) module will eventually be replaced by this one.
To install the new module, just be sure to include
 python_package = 'new'
in your cantera.conf file when building Cantera.

The new module is going to be introduced in Cantera 2.1, but you can already get an alpha by checking out the source code. So far, it appears quite stable to me. If you use the pre-compiled version 2.0, then you have to stick with the old (legacy) Python module.

Regards,

Thomas

On Monday, January 14, 2013 7:52:55 PM UTC+1, Mary Spellman wrote:

Does anybody know where I can get a Cantera User's guide for using Cantera with Python?  All I can find online is a manual for using it with Fortran 90.  Thank you.

Mary Spellman 

SUNY Buffalo

[Ray Speth]

Mary,

I would strongly dis-recommend using the Fortran documentation you have found. It is from Cantera 1.2 and does not accurately describe the Fortran interface provided by more recent versions of Cantera, including Cantera 2.0.x. As far as I know, there is no documentation for the current Fortran interface.

 If you're just starting with Cantera, I would strongly recommend the Python interface over any of the others, unless you have an application that requires you to work with a different interface. The site Thomas linked to contains the most comprehensive and accurate documentation that exists for Cantera's Python interfaces (and links directly to the current documentation for the C++ module). This documentation is essentially a reference manual explaining all of the functions defined in the Cantera Python module. It unfortunately doesn't provide much of a tutorial. For that, I think your best bet would be to look at the Python samples included with Cantera. If you download the source code, they are in the "samples/python" folder. Otherwise, they should be installed somewhere in the directory where you installed Cantera.

Regards,

Ray Speth

On Wednesday, January 16, 2013 12:33:36 PM UTC-5, Mary Spellman wrote:

Thank you, Thomas.  The page you cite gets me eventually to a Fortran User's Guide by Prof. Goodwin: 

http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~hessel/manualsAndEpilogues/cantera12.pdf

On the cover it says:

"This document is the Fortran 90 version of the Cantera tutorial. If you are interested in

using Cantera from C++ or Python, versions of this document exist for those languages as

well."

But I can't find a Python version of the manual.   I know some Fortran, though, so I will find a compiler and try it from Fortran.  Thank you.

MS

[Mary Spellman]

Thank you, Ray.

-MS-