> I do agree that just as with the IM display GUI, there would be > external factors (such as bad compositing for your desktop display) > that might or might not allow this to work, but sometimes it does work > (i.e., the user can get a cool effect where they create an interactive > plot on a semitransparent background where they could see through the > plot to some details from the underlying desktop). This already > happens for the display of file devices (at least those which conform > to the above model). So if users have this desire, I don't think our > library should get in the way just in case the user has external > factors that allow this to work. And I don't think there is much > downside to this approach; that is "not working due to external > factors" here means that the background is opaque or a checkerboard > rather than the plot does not work at all. >
> So I now think the interactive model should be that there is a canvas > provided which could be an opaque rectangle of a given color, an > image, text, or even (I argue above) the current desktop display. > Anyhow, our library should not care a bit about the nature of that > canvas and for each interactive page it should simply start with that > canvas, lay down a semitransparent background, and then render the > rest of the plot commands for the page. > > My impression is that currently our interactive device drivers don't > follow this model at all for multiple pages and instead simply render > a background (on the incorrect assumption it is always opaque) to > overlay previous pages. So moving from this model to the one above is > going to be a significant amount of work for each device driver, but I > think such work would be extremely worthwhile if we come to consensus > that the above interactive model is what we want. > The wxWidgets drivers certainly does as you say - it's response to plclear is to simply draw a rectangle of the appropriate colour. If that colour was transparent then I think we end up drawing over some default window background which I think is black, but I'm not sure - perhaps it depends on the window type, and it may even be unassigned memory. I can go with the idea of transparent windows - I have just checked and wxWidgets does have the capability to do transparent windows - we will see how well tested that code is I guess. Would you be interested in writing an example (prefereably multipaged) Alan? Perhaps this could just be one of the existing examples with a transparent background or a flag for transparent backgrounds. I will then try and get the wxWidgets driver to do as it should for that example. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=272487151&iu=/4140 _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
