From octave-graphics-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Tue Mar  9 13:28:25 1999
Subject: Re: Is there anybody out here? 
From: Jonathan King <kingjw at missouri dot edu>
To: octave-graphics at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 13:28:01 -0600 (CST)


On Tue, 9 Mar 1999, matthew joseph valenta wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Mar 1999 doolin at alpha-8 dot CE dot Berkeley dot EDU wrote:
> 
> > I am watching guppi pretty closely.  It claims to be
> > the main plotting engine for the gnome project.  If this
> > is true, it will be powerful, extensible, and 
> > GPL.  Something like that would provide a large head
> > start for any graphics front.
> 
> Right, what is the status of guppie?  Is it nearing a
> usable point?  Is there a way to communicate with it yet?
> I don't know how much that was going to get worked out in Gnome 1.0.

Guppi (no e) is, according to the homepage, not ready for end users.
Moreover, there's some weirdness in that project that bothers me.  In
particular, they don't seem to be very interested in scientific graphics.
 
[snip]
 
> > Actually, I don't really give a crap about a gui.  I have
> > just reached the limitations of what I can do with gnuplot.
> 
> Building a plotting GUI isn't my top priority; rather building the
> components from which any GUI could be built.  After all, I'm not sure
> it's wise to handle plotting in octave, when it is more useful to have a
> general tool like guppie or kchart if they're up to speed.

Guppi ain't up to speed.  I've never seen kchart.  Another idea I just had
was to see what/how R (aka Gnu S) does its graphics; I'm compiling it as I
write this.  I don't think this is going to help much with the GUI per se,
but S graphics are non-trivial.

Ooh! I just read that one of their projects is to do something
GUI-related, too.  And *they* are also trying to figure out how the heck
to do decent 3-d graphics.

Imagine that: another GPL'ed scientific software project out there
whose current graphics/GUI projects overlap with Octave's...  Does anybody
know if the R people have been approached (or are approachable)?

jking