On 2009-02-17 22:24-0500 Hezekiah M. Carty wrote: > On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 4:59 PM, Werner Smekal <sme...@iap.tuwien.ac.at> > wrote: >> should we apply for Google summer of Code? >> >> http://code.google.com/soc/2008/ >> >> what we need are good ideas, mentors and students who are willing to >> write code. >> >> Just an idea, this could be a chance to improve PLplot considerably. > > I don't know if this would be outside of the scope of a Summer of Code > project, but one of the TODO items I noticed when I started working > with PLplot (thought I can't find it now) is making a switch from > short integers to floating point values for the internal > representation of data. This, or something to start progress toward > this, may be a good (if large) project. It could focus on just the > library internals and one output driver. Postscript may be a good > target for a reference driver since it is currently used for output > testing. The other drivers and plotting functions could be adapted > after the SoC project if needed. > > A simpler project would be a suite of high-level functions: color > bars, box and whisker plots, etc. Some more 3D plotting might be > possible as well, such as a 3D plimage-like function or general 3D > solids (examples from OpenDX at [1] and [2]). > > The ability to rasterize specific plot function(s) in vector file > formats would be useful in some cases as well. Example 20 is a good > case for this as, in its current form, its Postscript output is > enormous. This process is fairly simple for Cairo devices (I've sent > a separate email about this), but it would be nice if the non-Cairo > PS, PDF and SVG devices could support this. > > I think the short to PLFLT (or some other float/double #define'd type) > conversion would be quite useful and could potentially simplify areas > of PLplot's internals. I don't know how realistic it would be to > complete, or at least make a reasonable start, on a change like this. > > Hez > > [1] - http://www.opendx.org/inaction/weather/images/original/class4.jpg > [2] - > http://www.opendx.org/inaction/astronomy/images/original/radio_sphere.jpg >
I would love to see an option for double (64-bit floating point) internal representation of positions in PLplot. However, that might be difficult for the SoC developer to finish. A presumably less difficult project would be to use our existing swig infrastructure to implement another language similar to what Werner just did for lua. That allows the SoC student to work with their favorite language (if we have not implemented that language yet). Getting back to Werner's original question, I think it is an excellent idea to apply to Google as a potential mentoring organization for a SoC project. However, there are some "time/effort" costs involved. According to http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2009/faqs.html (a more relevant URL than the one above) the application and especially the preparation process (i.e., putting together an SoC Ideas page) is non-trivial, and the mentoring organization deadline is coming up in a few weeks. Also, if our application was successful, the time spent mentoring a SoC developer is non-trivial (figure on 5 hours a week according to the faq although that value varies quite a bit). Werner, would you be willing to take on the responsibility/leadership for preparing the application and also convincing other developers to officially sign on for mentoring the SoC developer(s) if the application is successful? Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
