On 2012-10-05 05:56-0700 phil rosenberg wrote: > So in terms of implimentation, what would be the way ahead? If the intention would be to eventually replace the current maps with shapefile versions then are we happy that the core API will have a dependancy on shapelib (presumably the only alternative would be to fork our own version into the PLplot development tree)?
We handle it exactly like how we handle other core dependencies. If they are found we use them, if not we emit a CMake WARNING message, drop the functionality that is affected and continue. Andrew has already done most of this work with his CMake find module for the shapelib library. I have now (revision 12241) done slightly more and propagated the HAVE_SHAPELIB CMake variable to a C macro with the same name. So just surround your additions to plmap with #ifdef HAVE_SHAPELIB #endif and you don't have to be concerned further with this question. > I guess the current API needs to not change. I suggest you repurpose the plmap "type" string to a string that instead refers normally to a shapefile filename following the exact semantics of pszShapeFile documented in SHPOpen (see http://shapelib.maptools.org/shp_api.html). So normally that would be the path + basename + either the .shp or .shx suffix or "just be the path plus the basename of the pair." That would work fine as long as you reserved "globe", "usa", "cglobe", and "usaglobe" filenames to be used exactly as before for as long as we keep that old functionality. > but how will we decide whether a user wants to use a shapefile or the old style maps? See above suggestion. Eventually, we might want to convert the old-style maps to shapefiles, but we don't have to do that for now with the above reserved name idea so let's put off that decision until later. I hope this answers the last of your general background concerns so you can concentrate on your planned implementation of additions to the plmap internals so it will work for shapefiles if the filename (currently called the type argument) is not one of the reserved words. I am very much looking forward to your patch to that effect along with a practical demonstration of plmap decorating and transforming a good-looking shapefile map. 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); the Time Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.sf.net); 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 __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
