# PyGMT Community Calls 2021

## 2021-10-06 (UTC 18:00)

Youtube recording: (don't forget to hit the record button!) https://youtu.be/xKPAP4a3Fns

Participants (please add your name):

- Meghan
- Will
- Wei Ji
- Richkard
- Claus-Peter

Agenda:

1. PyGMT Release v0.5.0 plans (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/projects/7)
2. Discussion about how to handle the upcoming GMT 6.3 in PyGMT v0.6.0?
3. AGU 2021 Fall Meeting poster/presentation ideas
4. Questions/comments from community members

### Discussion

1. PyGMT Release v0.5.0
- Scheduled for Friday 15 October 2021
- Will volunteered to be the release manager!
- Will wants to finalize all of the "Add missing aliases xxx" Pull Requests (e.g. https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/1506)
- Will probably get the seafloor crustal age dataset done soon (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/1471)
- Meghan will try to open a draft PR to refactor `grdinfo` to not output a str, but a Python dictionary instead (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/issues/593), may need to have some big if-blocks
- Stuff to postpone to the next release PyGMT v0.6.0:
- Refactoring unit tests to not use `grdinfo` and moving to using `xarray.testing` instead of `numpy.testing`, which seems more exact as we can test each individual cell value, rather than just the min/max statistics
- One function for standardized table-like outputs (pd.DataFrame, numpy.array, file). Currently only for grd2xyz. Will suggests that it's not too hard to convert pd.DataFrame to np.array, so could just do this for v0.6.0
- The `project` feature by claudiodsf (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/1122/files), should probably help to take over after he replies. Probably several other Python reprojection functions, so not prioritized for v0.5.0
- New datasets:
- NASA Blue and Black Marble datasets (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/issues/1442), Wei Ji will need to do more work on the `rioxarray` side of things first to handle GeoTIFF images
- What sample datasets should we include? May be going ahead with the `seaborn` model, see discussion at https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/issues/1436.
2. Preparing for GMT 6.3
- Tentative date for October 22, or about one week after PyGMT v0.5.0
- Few dozen major changes, the 3 main things that will affect PyGMT are:
- More modifiers to GMT functions (need to update PyGMT documentation too), so do we need to pin to minimum version of GMT 6.3? Probably yes, but after PyGMT v0.5.0
- The @earth_relief dataset now has an auto-resolution feature, solely for the plotting modules and `grdcut`. May need to update the `load_earth_relief` function or something to get this feature into PyGMT.
- Update to plotting defaults for various projections, including -JG, which may break some tests
- GMT data server will have new SRTM15+v2.3, see https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/gmtserver-admin/issues/105
3. AGU 2021, we have a 3 min lightning talk!
- Friday 17 Dec. 4.21pm-4.24pm EST. Meghan will be presenting virtually, and should have some material prepared by early December.
4. Questions/Comments from community members
- Rickhard has a question about plotting graticules in the inside of the map. Hint: use `pygmt.config(MAP_FRAME_TYPE="inside")`. Posted at https://forum.generic-mapping-tools.org/t/help-with-displaying-graticules-inside-the-map-frame/2171/3.
- Claus-Peter has a question about using PyGMT/GMT for his paleo sea-level project, basically wanting to get an idea of the PyGMT project. We will endeavour to finalize `triangulate` (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/731) and `gmtselect` (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/1429) for PyGMT v0.5.0 since those are two functions he mentioned.
- To match with the high resolution SRTM dataset, DCW coastlines are not accurate enough. Meghan mentioned there is funding to update the GSSHG dataset, e.g. to associate islands to the correct countries.

---
## 2021-06-16 (UTC 17:00)

Youtube recording: https://youtu.be/HowgOWHxGiE

Participants (please add your name):

- Meghan Jones
- Michael Grund
- DongDong Tian
- Will Schlitzer
- Jiayuan Yao
- Wei Ji Leong

Agenda:

1. PyGMT Release v0.4.0 plans (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/projects/5)
2. Earth Science Women’s Network (ESWN) PyGMT Professional Development Workshop (https://eswnonline.org/29375-2)
3. (Tentative) Scipy 2021 sprints (https://www.scipy2021.scipy.org/sprints and AGU 2021 Fall Meeting abstract submission?

### Discussion:

1. PyGMT Release v0.4.0
- Will has some PRs in progress, could be v0.5.0 if not v0.4.0
- Meghan will try to finish some stuff on blockm* (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/1319), and will open an issue for Release v0.4.0 (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/issues/1333)
- The auto-tab-completion feature (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/1282) could be merged maybe, even though it might be a problem on Visual Studio Code.
- DongDong has a couple of PRs open, including a syntax warning one when long and short form parameters are both used (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/1316)
- Michael has hlines module PR open (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/923), but can wait v0.5.0
- Jiayuan will try to get multi-parameter symbol gallery PR done (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/1325), and may work on "Passing in array as symbols for plot" PR (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/1117) after some more discussion
- Wei Ji is working on conda dependency issues with geopandas installation (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/1331) - important to get in for SciPy sprint
2. Earth Science Women's Network PyGMT developer workshop
- https://eswnonline.org/29375-2
- Meghan, Wei Ji and Paul will be working on the workshop applications, announcements to be made early July
- A lot of good applications, will probably get 15 people, assuming 1:5 instructor to participant ratio. Could increase number of participants to >15 if more people volunteer to help out!
- Quite a few who are keen on learning PyGMT rather than development work, need to find a way to cater to that demand.
- Could see if we can get more than 15 people in for the 1st day refresher workshop (there are 50 applicants), for those who just want to learn how to use PyGMT in their studies/work.
- Need to get more beginner friendly issues in for people to work on during the workshop!
- Have a recorded tutorial so that other people can have access to it at a later date
- Liam is running ROSES tutorial again - possibly will provide an updated video recording on the PyGMT website's front page.
3. SciPy 2021
- Not running a tutorial this year
- Hosting a two day code sprint (hackathon) over the weekend
- https://www.scipy2021.scipy.org/sprints
- Open up a lot of beginner framed issues so that people can work on it!
- Wei Ji posted a https://gather.town environment that could be used for running the workshop interactively, will test things out within the dev team before running the actual sprint
4. Miscellaneous
- AGU abstracts open tomorrow (https://www.agu.org/Fall-Meeting/Pages/Present), can put one in for a workshop?
- PyGMT table output formats (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/issues/1318) - standardize output formats to be str or pandas.DataFrame for now, and decide on what formats to support next for v0.5.0
- Pythonic-friendly long form parameters (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/issues/1082) - for v0.5.0, e.g. pen (-P) and region (-R).
- Have some proof of concept PRs open for some long modifier options, and get feedback on these implementation from the wider community.
- v0.4.1? Will focus on bug fixes and documentation improvements on the few weeks after v0.4.0 release and not add any new features.

---

## 2021-02-05 (UTC 17:00)

Youtube recording: https://youtu.be/nerWMe-ZL9c

Participants (please add your name):

- Liam Toney
- Meghan
- Will
- Jason
- Rasheed
- Dongdong
- Wei Ji

Agenda:

- Scipy 2021 tutorial organization (PyGMT at SciPy 2021)
- PyGMT Release v0.3.0 plans (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/projects/4 2)
- Medium-to-long term development stuff
- etc

### Discussion:

- Scipy 2021:
- Deadline should be 16 Feb
- Discussion happening on Slack, ask for invite to get involved!
- Adapt ROSES 2020 talk, but expand some topics and make it more general and add newer stuff that has been wrapped
- Need to write an outline for the application
- 3-4 hour tutorials
- **Liam to start a new repo under GenericMappingTools organization to put some Markdown files and Jupyter notebooks**
- Have a look at older SciPy tutorials on the internet

- NASA proposal Building Developer Community
- Advertising workshops to the Earth Sciences Women Network
- Hear back in 3-6 months
- Half-time technical writer for documentation/tutorials
- More beginner focused tutorials and repeatable examples on Binder/JupyterHub
- May also get her/him to contribute to development
- Will be great to onboard people from more diverse community

- PyGMT Release v0.3.0
- Date: Friday 12 Feb 2020 proposed
- Big move of many modules to src/ folder ([plotting](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/832) and [non-plotting](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/832) modules)
- Should try to be compatible with GMT 6.1 and GMT 6.2
- [GMT themes](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/gmt/pull/3344) - default autoscaling for all the frame parameters - figures may look different
- Need to update tests to change from @mpl_image_compare to @check_figures_equal
- **subplots - a priority to finish wrapping (https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/822)**
- some [bugs on Windows](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/758) and [xarray inputs to shading of grdinfo](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/750) that are upstream issues to be fixed by Paul
- [grdinfo](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/799)/[grd2cpt](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/803)/[solar](https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/pygmt/pull/804) - being wrapped by Will
- **Will will start a Release issue**
- Test GMT release candidate 6.2.0 when that comes out

- Documentation
- FAQs? or direct folks to GMT forum. PyGMT section of forum?
- **Have a PyGMT specific section/category on the forum, for those people coming from the Python/Matplotlib ecosystem**
- Have PyGMT showcase for figures and source code
- Community contributed examples on Github of people's cool figures made for papers/publications

- Future Meetings
- Quarterly releases and quarterly meetings