On 2009-04-21 08:46+0930 Jonathan Woithe wrote: > There are many other examples and demos in the plplot distribution which > show off plplot in all its glory. Do we really need to complicate these > "output driver" demos with code which essentially duplicates what's already > in other examples?
One purpose of the examples is to test PLplot capabilities. I am concerned that extXdrawable_demo.c only exercises 7 PLplot commands (counting plsdev, plsetopt, plinit, and plend) so there might be hidden issues in the way this output driver is implemented which are not encountered because PLplot capabilities are exercised so little. The current extXdrawable_demo.c does exercise some 2D PLplot capability and also some limited 2D PLplot text capability. So at least we know those capabilites work. However, I would like to see it test more PLplot capabilities to increase the testing power of this external X drawable demo. I acknowledge I am paranoid about testing, but that paranoia got an energy boost today when I noticed the missing text in the ext-cairo-test results. :-) Whoever volunteers to enhance extXdrawable_demo.c (assuming we get such a volunteer) might as well make the result interesting looking as well to serve yet another purpose of the examples which is to show off the glory of PLplot. Note, for GUI applications like this there is no practical purpose served by making the result identical to any other example, and, although not necessary, I would encourage the volunteer to do something entirely different here to add a bit more interest. > [out of order] For someone who just wants to see > how to use these specific features, they then need to trawl through all this > extra generic plplot code to get to the stuff they want (assuming that they > don't completely overlook the bits they need). Good point which could/should be addressed by carefully segregating the PLplot commands (e.g., using a separate routine) from the rest of the demo source and documentating that segration within the code. I would now like to change to the related topic of ext-cairo-test.c. If we get a volunteer to enhance that code (once the text bug is solved for extcairo), then I would strongly encourage that volunteer to simply copy one of the more complicated standard C examples (say example 9). The reason for this difference with the suggested enhancement of extXdrawable_demo.c is ext-cairo-test.c produces a PostScript file result. That allows us to compare PostScript file results directly to make sure everything is working as intended (at least for the PLplot API subset exercised by the standard example that is copied). 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 __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stay on top of everything new and different, both inside and around Java (TM) technology - register by April 22, and save $200 on the JavaOne (SM) conference, June 2-5, 2009, San Francisco. 300 plus technical and hands-on sessions. Register today. Use priority code J9JMT32. http://p.sf.net/sfu/p _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
