[MATRIX-SIG] [long] A NO-Proposal for a plot-package

[Konrad Hinsen]

> First some of the things I think a ubiquitous plotpackage should cover:
>...

That's a long list, although of course all that is desirable. But
we need something shorter for getting started!

So let's look at this from an implementation point of view and see
what is essential and how much development can be parallelized.

An essential part seems to be the intermediate representation of
"graphics" (which needn't be limited to plots) in terms of elementary
objects such as lines, markers, circles etc. This must be defined
first. Then work can progress in two directions:

1) Low-level drivers, which turn the intermediate representation
   into images, Tk objects, PostScript files, etc. They would also
   take care of animation and editing (where it makes sense).

2) High-level plot-to-graphics code. This would consist of one
   module per type of plot, and the modules would to a large
   degree be independent of each other.

For plain plotting and also animation, the interfaces between the
modules seem straightforward. Editing, on the other hand, is
not so trivial, since the high-level plot objects must be able
to turn graphical information back into numerical data, which is
not always possible, at least not uniquely (think about editing
a contour plot!). Inquiry (getting the value for the point under
the mouse cursor, for example) is somewhere in between.

> 1) Use standard or at least very portable graphics-libraries: If the
> effort is done to build a new plot-system it should be availabel with
> some drivers on all platforms, where Numpy is availabel. I think the

My first attempt at a general low-level driver would be Tk canvases,
since Tk is widely supported. Together with PostScript for printing,
this would already make many people happy. Next is OpenGL, and then
the system-specific libraries.


But now for the really important question: do we have enough manpower
to complete such a project to a useful stage in a reasonable amount of
time? Yes, that's a call for volunteers. Starting with myself, I would
be able to do some useful work, but not necessarily on a predictable
time scale.
-- 
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Konrad Hinsen                          | E-Mail: hinsen@ibs.ibs.fr
Laboratoire de Dynamique Moleculaire   | Tel.: +33-4.76.88.99.28
Institut de Biologie Structurale       | Fax:  +33-4.76.88.54.94
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