Hey folks -

I've been using Python at my day job lately and needed to create a
scatter plot to examine some data. I had roughly 11,000 points. Since
I'm trying to use Python, I wrote a little script to visualize that
data using matplotlib. Although matplotlib has pan and zoom
capabilities, I was frustrated at how sluggish the response was. I
agree that 11,000 is a lot of points, but it was frustrating
nonetheless.

"Well," I thought, "I wonder how my PDL::Graphics::Prima would handle
this many data points." I had visualized a ton of data when I started
work on the library (100,000 points, maybe?), but I had made a few
low-level changes that I figured would make things slower. So I wrote
a small Perl script, and the en result is that PDL::Graphics::Prima is
noticeably more responsive than matplotlib. Furthermore, last night I
finally overhauled PDL::Drawing::Prima's internals with the aim of
improving the speed and making the operations more robust (the latter
being the real goal, the former being a nice benefit), and using the
new code leads to plots that are even more responsive.

I'm sure that an OpenGL-based visualization tool with a half-decent
video card could out-perform PDL::Graphics::Prima, but for now, I'm
quite pleased. Expect a new PDL::Drawing::Prima to come out in the
next week, along with a revised PDL::Graphics::Prima. :-)

David

-- 
 "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
  Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
  by definition, not smart enough to debug it." -- Brian Kernighan

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