From graphics-request at octave dot org Mon Jul 5 15:20:46 2004 Subject: Re: OctPlot - yes it's yet another handle graphics package for octave From: Ole Jacob Hagen To: Shai Ayal CC: graphics at octave dot org Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2004 22:20:27 +0200 Shai, Well, what can I say. First some comments about Qt and KDE. Qt-applications run in gnome and other window managers such as fluxbox, blackbox, enlightenment and so on, without installing KDE. KDE is built using Qt libraries, and not the other way around. No qt => No kde. Redhat should also be able run Qt-applications without KDE. Qt-applications runs natively in Windows environment, which is expected from Qt since Qt-API is available in all OS, such as *NIX, Windows and Mac OS X (using FINK). If you are using Qt/Win32 from kde-cygwin project, you will be able to compile your own qt applications in Windows. A binary package with development libraries for Win32 should be available shortly, when OpenGL and threading has been implemented. Can your OctPlot be used in other OS than Linux-based systems, without using Cygwin? I saw you are using unix domain sockets as communication layer between Octave and OctPlot. I also noticed that you have used some code from knewplot. At this present time we are only 5 developers in Oplot project, and we have the following main "tasks": 1 developer; Windows compatibility 2 developers; Coin, and OpenGL related stuff + Qt programming. 1 developers; Props-maintainer. Other people are always welcome as developers, just send me an email. We would like to make a Oplot Community, pretty much the same as the R people have done. Four of us are programmers by proffesion, and one is having programming as his dearest hobby. The Props package we are making, can be used by any Visualisation Application together with Octave. That's very important to make generic ideas that can be used and easily maintained. This will be helpful in getting new Visualisation Applications to use Props package. We are not a hard group to convience at all, we are very flexible. But we are programmers as profession. A lot of visualisation application projects for Octave have been started, e.g knewplot,qmatplot (kmatplot), oplot, octplot, KV (KDE Visualiser), glplot, and of course gnuplot. Many of this projects had very promising ideas and I bow in respect to all these developers. Many of these projects has been dead for the last 6 months and longer. KV never came out with a release, but the developer of KV had a lot of great ideas, and I am still hoping he will continue his work. I hope that Octplot will not share the same destiny as knewplot, kmatplot and glplot to mention some. Many of these projects has also been maintained by one developer only. And the reason is the same as with OctPlot. Progression and continueity in the project is not guaranteed when there is only one developer in a project. Personally I believe you have a good code base, but you're only one which I believe is a weakness. I hope you are going strong and will continue what you're started in your great work and that you are getting more people on your project. Octave needs a newer and better visualisation application than Gnuplot. Gnuplot looks fine and have been around for a quite a good time now, and has earned their respect from a lot gnuplotters. Gnuplot is very powerful and flexible if you know how to use it properly. Cheers, Ole J. Shai Ayal wrote: > Ole, > > I do not mean to start a holy war here, but I think installing the > whole qt/kde GIANT codebase for someone who is just out to get octave > for windows is really asking too much. Even in linux, trying to > upgrade in rh 7.2 to the new version of KDE (so I could try out > knewplot) took me over a week (I had to install a new gcc, qt, and KDE > in what amounted to 100s of MB downloads and hours of compilation). > One of my goals is to be able to add octplot to one of the octave > installers for windows so that a normal windows user could get octave > with graphics using a simple one file installer. > > Anyway now that I'm done not starting a holy war, I am sure that > because oplot is maintained by a large group of people it is probably > much better then octplot in many senses: more features, cleaner code > and more. I will look at the oplot code and if I have any insightfull > comments, I will not keep them to myself. > > And yes, I am interested in reinventingg the wheel, because to me it > is interesting to go through all the steps (from the first draft of > square wheels to ultra-modern roller blades style things). > > Happy coding to all > Shai A >