From graphics-request at octave dot org Sun Jul  4 23:47:35 2004
Subject: Re: OctPlot - yes it's yet another handle graphics package for octave
From: Paul Kienzle <pkienzle at users dot sourceforge dot net>
To: Shai Ayal <shaiay at yahoo dot com>
Cc: graphics at octave dot org
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 00:46:24 -0400

Shai,

Please keep a clean separation between graphics toolkit and
plotting.  E.g., 3D plots should only have the open gl window
handle, not the handle of the toolkit which wraps them.    Work
with other groups.  Find code in knewplot and oplot that you
can use (much easier if either were implemented independently
from a particular toolkit).  Separate it cleanly, improve it and feed
it back to them.

Do the UI in a high level scripting language.  Either octave (eat
your own dogfood), or Tcl or Python.  I know Tcl/Tk has an
active community developing UI widgets, which means less work
for you.  Unfortunately, it is not as organized as it should be, so
you get lots of different implementations of the same widgets
(sound familiar?).   I suppose Gtk/Fltk/Qt offers the same benefits,
except that the widgets are in C.  For the common widgets, use a
common interface so that another toolkit can be substituted when
fltk gets crufty.  This is pretty much dictated by the desire for
compatibility anyway.

Don't short change printing.  Working scientists need to include
plots in their log books.  BTW, TeX-like math markup in plot
labels would be nice.  You might want to look at some mathml
renderers (e.g., gtkmathml or amaya), or others (e.g., texmacs).

To paraphrase Newton, we can see farther standing on each
other's shoulders.

Paul Kienzle
pkienzle at users dot sf dot net

On Jul 4, 2004, at 2:41 PM, Shai Ayal wrote:

> Hi all
>
> I'm happy to announce release 0.1 of OctPlot, a handle graphics 
> package for Octave, striving to become a superset of M*tlab handle 
> graphics. It is available on
>
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/octplot/
>
> Octplot's claim to fame is that is it based on fltk, the small fast 
> toolkit. It is cross platform and runs natively on linux and cygwin 
> (no X required for cygwin). It is tested on Linux (rh9, fc1) and 
> cygwin, and should theoretically work on the Mac OS X also.
>
> As most of the other packages out there, it also utilizes OpenGL for 
> possible hardware acceleration.
>
> Currently octplot does the following:
> 2D line plots using the commands "plot" , "line"
> property setting and query using the commands "set" ,"get"
> multiple figures using "figure"
> axis limits set and query using the command "axis"
> axis zoom using the mouse (zoom using left button, unzoom using right).
> Quality postscript output using the command "print"
>
> A sample session:
>
> cd octplot-0.1/src ## sorry, no install script yet
> octave ## tested with 2.1.49, 2.1.50 and 2.1.57, and octave-forge
> setup_octplot ## this sets up dispatch etc...
> h=plot(sin((0:10000)/10000*2*pi,'g-");  ## plot a line & get handle
> get(h); ## shows all available properties
> set(h,linestyle,"--","linewidth,3,marker,"+"); ## set a few of them
> ## now play with the mouse to zoom in and out :)
>
> As you see release 0.1 has limited functionality and I put it out 
> there mainly to get feedback, so don't hesitate. Please use the 
> sourceforge feedback mechanism.
>
> future plans --
> add patch, subplots, TeX parsing of text, uicontrols, 3D ...
>
>
> Enjoy It, I know I did
> Shai
>