Improving the code base

[amotl]

Dear Patent2Net community,

we had a little fruitful conversation with @Patent2net, @rfaga, @cvanderlei and @Quoniam off GitHub about starting to work on some improvements to the codebase. As some of these changes already landed here, i wanted to take the opportunity to share some details about them with the whole community.

The development is taking place inside the "develop" branch of this repository. @rfaga was so kind to merge some of the changes already and we will continue to work on this branch while continuously making development releases for the upcoming "3.0.0" version, which might evolve from our current work.

The versioning scheme will follow Python module standards for doing so, so we are starting with "3.0.0-dev1" and will also track our changes inside the CHANGES.rst file. We also introduced a setup.py file for making Patent2Net a first citizen of the world of Python packages.

The overall direction we are aiming at is:

• Make Patent2Net be usable as a library
• Make code structure and data flow easier to follow and more flexible
• Improve the command line interface
• Improve the documentation

We are happy if this can spark your interest and welcome any kind of contribution.

With kind regards,
Andreas.