[PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] Re: Plotting: Windows version of Yorick & Gist graphics

[L. Busby]

[ Tom Short said ]
>A win95/nt beta version of the array language Yorick is available at:
>
>   ftp://ftp-icf.llnl.gov/pub/Yorick
>
>It is an MFC program which is similar to PythonWin 
>(commands are entered into an edit-like window).
>
>This is a very useful tool in its own right, but of special interest
>for NumPy is the Gist graphics library included with Yorick. It is
>available for unix, the mac, and now windows. It would be a good 
>choice for a cross platform graphics library for NumPy.
>
>The folks at LLNL have already done an interface to Python (PyGist),
>and a few weeks ago, their posts to this list indicated that they
>were working on an object-oriented interface.
>
>E-mail from Steve Langer (who ported Yorick to Windows and the Mac)
>said that he did not think anyone at LLNL was doing a port of Gist
>for PythonWin. Steve did issue one warning though:
>
>> There are some issues about the Python event loop vs.
>> the Gist event loop that would probably be very different under
>> windows and UNIX.
>
>Someone with a compiler may want to get the source code from Steve
>(shl@icf.llnl.gov) and try and interface it with
>PythonWin+NumPy+PyGist. If anyone else from LLNL has any suggestions
>or comments on their plans for PyGist, please let us know.
>
>- Tom

I don't really have any suggestions.  As far as comments go, a Windows
port of Python + Gist is not on my short list of high-priority
projects at this time (so others should certainly feel free to have at
it).  The highest priority for me at the moment is to update the Pygist
module so that it supports the latest Gist library, published as part
of Yorick 1.4.

One of the principles which I tried to cleave unto in writing the
Pygist module was to behave as a strict client of Python, NumPy, and
the Gist library itself.  I didn't entirely succeed - it required a 4
line patch in Python to support the Gist event loop for X Windows
graphics.  But there were no other changes required in NumPy or the
Gist library itself.

It is not quite the case yet, as Tom said above, that ``the Gist
library is available for unix, the mac, and now windows''.  More
precisely, there are versions of *Yorick* which run on those
platforms.  But there is not yet a single Gist library which presents a
uniform API and provides a uniform mechanism for event handling across
all those platforms.  That is a problem with some hard tradeoffs.

My comments are not meant to discourage anyone.  I do think that you
will have to modify both Python and Gist to accomplish this goal.  You
should not underestimate the difficulty of building and maintaining
such a code, while continuing to track changes made by the separate
authors.

Lee

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