Ondrej Certik wrote:
> * freetype (this could be rewritten using ctypes)

I see that pyglet already has a freetype wrapper using ctypes -- it 
would be interesting to see if that could be used as a starting point. 
That could be used as a starting point.  (Of course, ctypes is an 
external dependency before Python-2.5, which adds a dependency to 
matplotlib).

I generally don't like ctypes-based wrappers since changes in the 
dependency can mean segfaults at runtime.  I'm having a problem getting 
pyglet to work on my particular version of OpenGL, for instance.  But 
perhaps freetype is stable enough for that not to be a problem.

> * Agg (this could be optional)

On the transforms branch, Agg is used for bezier curve realisation, 
whether the Agg renderer is being used or not.  This is used for things 
like hit-testing and range-setting of path collections etc.  This was 
not fast enough in my earlier numpy-based implementation, since to take 
advantage of numpy, you generally have to allocate lots of memory to 
store the results in.  In this particular case, each value can be 
immediately thrown away, so all that extra work was unnecessary.

> Compiling really sucks. 

Agreed.  But there is a spectrum of suckage here.  It also sucks to be 
unable to check that a call to some library that you don't provide 
(freetype) will succeed.

>>> Another cool stuff in matplotlib is the pure python latex renderer
>>> (/matplotlib-0.91.1/lib/matplotlib/mathtext.py). See our issue for
>>> more info:
>> Yes, the mathtext support in matplotlib is very nice, and Michael
>> deserves the credit for taking from a package that
>> works but has warts, to an extremely nice math layout engine using the
>> Knuth algorithms.  I'm sure others would like to use it without having
>> to pull in all of matplotlib.  With a ctypes freetype wrapper, it
>> should be possible to build a free-standing mathtext.
> 
> And this is really cool. I would like to have that. :)
> 
> We'll try to help with that one.

Great!  I'll start by looking at pyglet's freetype wrapper and see how 
far I get.

Cheers,
Mike

-- 
Michael Droettboom
Science Software Branch
Operations and Engineering Division
Space Telescope Science Institute
Operated by AURA for NASA

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/
_______________________________________________
Matplotlib-devel mailing list
Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel

Reply via email to