The IUP library (see <http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/iup/> and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUP_(software)>) has recently been discussed on the CMake developer's mailing list as a light-weight replacement for the GUI needed for cmake-gui (which is currently Qt based).
So I thought I should bring this library to the attention of device driver developers here. The key characteristics of this library are it is very small, it is MIT licensed, and it provides a uniform IUP GUI API that wraps one of the following list of backend possibilities that are available now: UNIX (SunOS, IRIX, and AIX) using Motif 2.x UNIX (FreeBSD and Linux) using GTK+ (since 3.0) Microsoft Windows XP/2003/Vista/7 using the Win32 API It appears there is a lot of developer interest in this library because of the above characteristics so, for example, one of the posters on the CMake developer's list mentioned he was writing a CMake-based build system for IUP and also a IUP wrapper for the native Mac OS X GUI (which would make this a truly cross-platform library). Because of such developer enthusiasm, I also suspect it only a matter of time until even more IUP backend graphical libraries are supported such as Qt and wxWidgets. Also, GTK+ and the Win32 API (when using GDI/GDI+/Uniscribe or Direct2D/DirectWrite) (and Qt and wxWidgets) all support native unicode fonts and complex text layout. A google search for unicode site:http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/iup/ shows 10 hits and what appears to be full cross-platform support for the utf-8 encoding of unicode by the IUP library. A similar search for the "complex text layout" or "CTL" terms found nothing relevant, but complex text layout is completely in the domain of the backend graphical libraries and nothing to do with the IUP API so I suspect users of this potential device would enjoy complete CTL support. In sum, there is no deep urgency to create an IUP-based interactive device driver for PLplot, but IUP is cross-platform (including Mac OS X soon) and supports utf-8 and (likely) CTL just like our best device drivers (i.e., svg, qt, cairo, wxwidgets) currently do. Thus, the IUP library provides a pretty interesting possibility for supporting a new interactive device of extremely high quality. So if someone here is interested in developing an "iup" device I would certainly encourage that effort. 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 __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
