Hi Ziga, > I'm considering including Plplot into wxMaxima (crossplatform Maxima > gui based on wxWidgets) as a plotting library. I have successfully > built the examples and tried them on Mac OS X. I have some questions > regarding that: > > 1) I would like to include all the necessary sources of plplot in > wxmaxima source, so the user doesn't need to compile the plplot > himself (so plplot is built when wxmaxima is built). The features > wxMaxima would benefit most from are (in order of importance): > -antialiased drawing in some form or another, preferably wxwidgets > -png export (preferably looks the same as in application - perhaps > wxwidgets can do that) > -pdf export > -svg export > What would be the minimum of needed sources and libraries to enable > that features? src directory, include directory, csa and nn lib, wxWidgets driver code and qhull (external) library. Maybe more. But as Andrew said I wouldn't do that. It's better to write a script, which downloads plplot and qhull, installs it in a local directory and wxMaxima uses that library. I use that in my programs as well and that is minimum effort for the user. > Particulary I would like to avoid dependance on > external libraries (such as qt ..) as much as possible to keep > wxMaxima easy to build and small. I know, plplot can use wxWidgets > for antialiased drawing - no need for AGG or cairo - which is great. > What about exports to png, svg and pdf? > You don't need qt, only for the qt drivers. Antialiased drawing is possible with the wxGraphicsContext backend available for wxWidgets 2.8.x. I plan to add support saving to png files using wxWidgets directly. In fact it's already in the code, but not really enabled, since I'm still thinking of providing a wxpng, wxtiff, etc. devices explicitely. This is work in progress and finished soon. the svg driver doesn't need a library and the pdf driver depends on the haru library. While the png output would be exactly the same as what you see with the wxWidgets driver, the pdf output might be a little bit different.
> 2) Speed of drawing - I would like to be able to resize and rotate my > plots interactivly (but not necessarily drawing the 'inbetween' > frames of rotation or resize, just the ending frame). From running > examples on (13) wxwidgets 'terminal' I've noticed it's extremely > slow, compared to xwindows 'terminal'... Is this a direct result of > using wxGC for drawing or can it be made faster? Is QT or cairo faster? > wxWidgets is slower, but not extremely slower. AFAIR from my tests, about 3 times slower, but this also includes the start of the application which should not be added to the plotting time. Anyway, I use plplot in my application and resize is very fast if it's a line plot. A 3d-surface plot with many points will not behave like that very likely - so it depends on the plot. Cairo, QT will not be faster. In fact wxWidgets on Linux uses cairo for the wxGraphicsbackend, while wxWidgets on Mac uses carbon or the newer Graphics API directly, so it should be as close to the speed you would get with a native Mac driver. Still the wxWidgets driver can be optimized for speed, but this was not my main task in the past, since it was fast enough for me. Regards, Werner > 3) Out of curiosity - what's the point of svg cairo and svgqt, > pdfqt ... if they do the same thing with subpar results? What's the > reason for providing svgqt, when there is a default svg, nonreliant > on QT libs, available at all times? Is svgqt or svgcairo terminal in > some ways better than 'svg'? > > Regards, > Ziga Lenarcic > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial > Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables > unlimited royalty-free distribution of the report engine > for externally facing server and web deployment. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects > _______________________________________________ > Plplot-general mailing list > Plplot-general@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-general > -- Dr. Werner Smekal Institut fuer Allgemeine Physik Technische Universitaet Wien Wiedner Hauptstr 8-10 A-1040 Wien Austria DVR-Nr: 0005886 email: sme...@iap.tuwien.ac.at web: http://www.iap.tuwien.ac.at/~smekal phone: +43-(0)1-58801-13463 (office) +43-(0)1-58801-13469 (laboratory) fax: +43-(0)1-58801-13499 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing server and web deployment. http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects _______________________________________________ Plplot-general mailing list Plplot-general@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-general
