C API

[berceanu]

Just food for thought, but I am thinking if it would make sense to have a lower level C API for openPMD, that could be easily used from other languages.

One example of a C++ library that does this very nicely is DuckDB which can be interfaced from Python, R, Java, Julia, Swift etc.

I guess Fortran can also use such an API.

[franzpoeschel]

Relevant discussion for this: #625

There is (AFAIK) currently no work planned on this, but (similar to the Julia bindings currently being integrated), we are open to contributions on this. I recognize the value of C bindings through C's good FFI support, as a basis for easily building bindings / custom interfaces for programming languages that are not directly supported by this library.

[berceanu]

Also relevant: #1537 and #1025 (comment)