> > Chris - > > I've thought a bit about what you wrote about PLplot. I agree that the > 'right' solution to cross-platform 2d plotting is an interface between > something and OpenGL. I advocate PLplot, but could be convinced that PGPLOT > is the way forward if somebody can figure out the interface and licensing > (or is that just FUD?). I just figured that removing the z-axis from TriD > would be a quick hack that would spur us on to finally interfacing PLplot > with OpenGL. As it is, OpenGL already renders lines for us, albeit in three > dimensions, so we should be able to use that rendering and force the viewing > orientation to be 'straight on,' right? > > The problem with PLplot at the moment is that it's build process is so > clumsy. Please understand that I do not mean any disrespect to the PLplot > developers: they simply cannot depend on a good shell scripting language. > Cygwin? MinGW? VC++? Each of these have slightly different build > processes, but batch files aren't powerful enough to detect the differences > and act accordingly. The PLplot people do not release pre-compiled versions > of their libraries, either, which makes sense given the large number of ways > you can configure the library. The only practical approach is the one they > took: to write instructions explaining how to install PLplot by hand.
> However, WE CAN expect Perl to be available, and we can make a number of > assumptions about what we want in our builds of PLplot. Therefore, I am > considering writing some sort of Alien package for PLplot. Hopefully it > will be as simple as wrapping the build of PLplot in an ExtUtils::MakeMaker > script (or Module::Build script, but I'd need to get a lot of help for > that). A first cut would be a plain-old perl script that attempts to detect > the build system and either builds the makefile or invokes the correct build > commands for PLplot. Among other things, this would eliminate the need for > cmake, which is even worse in my view than requiring a fortran compiler > because the latter would at least be useful for other PDL modules. If I > could get some sort of script that installs it on any 'reasonable machine' > running Perl, we might be able to seriously consider using PLplot for > cross-platform plotting. The Plplot build is pretty complicated so I'm not sure this is the way to go. I'd suggest using Perl to download & install the Plplot dependencies such as cmake, and then script the build process. -Hazen _______________________________________________ Perldl mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.jach.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/perldl
