Merge pull request #19 from petebachant/md-readme

Convert README to Markdown

Author: PierreRaybaut

README

@@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
+python-qwt
+==========
+
+Purpose and Motivation
+----------------------
+
+The ``python-qwt`` project was initiated to solve -at least temporarily-
+the obsolescence issue of `PyQwt` (the Python-Qwt C++ bindings library)
+which is no longer maintained. The idea was to translate the original
+Qwt C++ code to Python and then to optimize some parts of the code by
+writing new modules based on NumPy and other libraries.
+
+The ``python-qwt`` package consists of a single Python package named
+`qwt` and of a few other files (examples, doc, ...).
+
+
+Copyrights
+----------
+
+### Main code base ###
+Copyright (c) 2002 Uwe Rathmann, for the original Qwt C++ code
+Copyright (c) 2015 Pierre Raybaut, for the Qwt C++ to Python
+translation and optimization
+Copyright (c) 2015 Pierre Raybaut, for the python-qwt specific and
+exclusive Python material
+
+### PyQt, PySide and Python2/Python3 compatibility modules ###
+Copyright (c) 2009-2013 Pierre Raybaut
+Copyright (c) 2013-2015 The Spyder Development Team
+
+### Some examples ###
+Copyright (C) 2003-2009 Gerard Vermeulen, for the original PyQwt code
+Copyright (c) 2015 Pierre Raybaut, for the PyQt5/PySide port and
+further developments (e.g. ported to python-qwt API)
+
+
+License
+-------
+
+The `qwt` Python package was partly (>95%) translated from Qwt C++
+library: the associated code is distributed under the terms of the LGPL
+license. The rest of the code was either wrote from scratch or strongly
+inspired from MIT licensed third-party software.
+See included LICENSE file for more details about licensing terms.
+
+
+Overview
+--------
+
+The `qwt` package is a pure Python implementation of Qwt C++ library with
+the following limitations.
+
+The following `Qwt` classes won't be reimplemented in `qwt` because most
+powerful features already exist in `guiqwt`:
+- QwtPlotZoomer
+- QwtCounter
+- QwtEventPattern
+- QwtPicker
+- QwtPlotPicker
+
+QwtClipper is not implemented yet (and it will probably be very difficult
+or impossible to implement it in pure Python without performance issues).
+As a consequence, when zooming in a plot curve, the entire curve is still
+painted (in other words, when working with large amount of data, there is
+no performance gain when zooming in).
+
+
+Dependencies
+------------
+
+### Requirements ###
+- Python >=2.6 or Python >=3.0
+- PyQt4 >=4.4 or PyQt5 >= 5.5
+- NumPy >= 1.5
+
+
+Installation
+------------
+
+From the source package:
+
+    python setup.py install