Re: [Plplot-devel] Legends
Hi, Bill,
On Oct 6, 2010, at 8:19 , Schwab,Wilhelm K wrote:
> a performance argument is a stretch
I agree, that's why I prefaced my comments with...
>> For the smallish amounts of
>> legend text it probably doesn't matter that much either way
Since plotting is inherently much more number-heavy than text-heavy,
this may never be an issue for plplot. On the other hand, if it ever
did arise, it would be nice to have a single unified approach for
passing an array of strings instead of two different ways.
Another argument for keeping it char ** would be inertia. It's
already written this way ("designer's choice") so don't change it
unless there is a compelling reason.
Dave
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Re: [Plplot-devel] Legends
On 2010-10-05 21:59-0700 David MacMahon wrote: > Does the library strdup the passed in strings, render them before returning, > or just copy the pointers for later rendering? Hi Dave: It renders the text with plptex( text_x_world + text_justification * text_width0, ty, 0.1, 0.0, text_justification, text[i] ); where i is the index of the entry within the legend. IOW, pllegend contains a bit of low-level PLplot C library manipulation to determine ratios of some units with others, save internal PLplot variables for later restoration, etc., but most of it is high-level, i.e., it simply makes calls to ordinary PLplot functionality such as plptex to get the job done. 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 __ -- Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1, ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3. Spend less time writing and rewriting code and more time creating great experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today. http://p.sf.net/sfu/beautyoftheweb ___ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
Re: [Plplot-devel] Legends
Dave, I'm content to be voted down on this, but a performance argument is a stretch: how can one possibly fit enough legend text on a graph to cause a CPU any stress at all? The first real use I made of PLplot was to plot 500,000 sample time series; copying a few hundred bytes (max) of text will not make a bit of difference by comparison. Bill From: David MacMahon [dav...@astro.berkeley.edu] Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2010 12:59 AM To: Alan W. Irwin Cc: Schwab,Wilhelm K; Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Plplot-devel] Legends On Oct 5, 2010, at 21:42 , Alan W. Irwin wrote: > On 2010-10-05 22:19-0400 Schwab,Wilhelm K wrote: > >> I was interested in building it (5.9.7) to try the legend code. >> Is there a reason for the double pointer? It seems that >> >> this part\0that part\0...\0and the last part\0\0 >> >> would do the job just as easily?? > > I am willing to keep an open mind about changing the > present approach if we run into trouble interfacing const char ** > text to > other languages. FWIW, I vote for keeping it as char**. For the smallish amounts of legend text it probably doesn't matter that much either way, but with more and/or larger strings that might come from different locations, the cost of copying into one buffer can become significant. Creating an array of char* and populating with pointers into a long buffer containing back-to-back strings is not nearly so onerous (presuming you know how many strings you have to begin with so you can allocate a big enough char* array). Does the library strdup the passed in strings, render them before returning, or just copy the pointers for later rendering? Thanks, Dave (who has obviously not examined the legend implementation!) -- Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1, ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3. Spend less time writing and rewriting code and more time creating great experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today. http://p.sf.net/sfu/beautyoftheweb ___ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
Re: [Plplot-devel] Legends
On Tue, Oct 05, 2010 at 09:59:48PM -0700, David MacMahon wrote: > > On Oct 5, 2010, at 21:42 , Alan W. Irwin wrote: > > > On 2010-10-05 22:19-0400 Schwab,Wilhelm K wrote: > > > >> I was interested in building it (5.9.7) to try the legend code. > >> Is there a reason for the double pointer? It seems that > >> > >> this part\0that part\0...\0and the last part\0\0 > >> > >> would do the job just as easily?? > > > > I am willing to keep an open mind about changing the > > present approach if we run into trouble interfacing const char ** > > text to > > other languages. > > FWIW, I vote for keeping it as char**. For the smallish amounts of > legend text it probably doesn't matter that much either way, but with > more and/or larger strings that might come from different locations, > the cost of copying into one buffer can become significant. Creating > an array of char* and populating with pointers into a long buffer > containing back-to-back strings is not nearly so onerous (presuming > you know how many strings you have to begin with so you can allocate > a big enough char* array). > > Does the library strdup the passed in strings, render them before > returning, or just copy the pointers for later rendering? I second keeping it as char **. I think David has made some good points. Also, the char ** is a far more standard way of dealing with strings. It is easy to split into individual strings without having to search through the whole array of characters. It is also much more standard and hence easier to interfaces with other code and also to link in with our many language bindings. Andrew -- Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1, ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3. Spend less time writing and rewriting code and more time creating great experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today. http://p.sf.net/sfu/beautyoftheweb ___ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
Re: [Plplot-devel] Legends
On Oct 5, 2010, at 21:42 , Alan W. Irwin wrote: > On 2010-10-05 22:19-0400 Schwab,Wilhelm K wrote: > >> I was interested in building it (5.9.7) to try the legend code. >> Is there a reason for the double pointer? It seems that >> >> this part\0that part\0...\0and the last part\0\0 >> >> would do the job just as easily?? > > I am willing to keep an open mind about changing the > present approach if we run into trouble interfacing const char ** > text to > other languages. FWIW, I vote for keeping it as char**. For the smallish amounts of legend text it probably doesn't matter that much either way, but with more and/or larger strings that might come from different locations, the cost of copying into one buffer can become significant. Creating an array of char* and populating with pointers into a long buffer containing back-to-back strings is not nearly so onerous (presuming you know how many strings you have to begin with so you can allocate a big enough char* array). Does the library strdup the passed in strings, render them before returning, or just copy the pointers for later rendering? Thanks, Dave (who has obviously not examined the legend implementation!) -- Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1, ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3. Spend less time writing and rewriting code and more time creating great experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today. http://p.sf.net/sfu/beautyoftheweb ___ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
Re: [Plplot-devel] Legends
On 2010-10-05 22:19-0400 Schwab,Wilhelm K wrote: > I was interested in building it (5.9.7) to try the legend code. Is there a > reason for the double pointer? It seems that > > this part\0that part\0...\0and the last part\0\0 > > would do the job just as easily?? I guess arranging a string with a bunch of null terminations scattered through out it to delimit the parts would work, but to me that seems a less standard approach than simply using an array of pointers to strings. My feeling is the present approach will interface well with standard string handling methods for the various languages we support. That proved to be the case for python/numpy since that combination has an object (a numpy array of pointers to strings) which maps quite well to the present const char ** text. However, that is only one interfacing case so far, and I am willing to keep an open mind about changing the present approach if we run into trouble interfacing const char ** text to other languages. 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 __ -- Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1, ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3. Spend less time writing and rewriting code and more time creating great experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today. http://p.sf.net/sfu/beautyoftheweb ___ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
[Plplot-devel] Legends
I started out trying to build the new release and did not get far with the instructions on the wiki. Then I found this: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/unable-to-install-and-build-plplot-5-9-a-789425/ Building plplot-5.9.5 : 1) cd plplot-5.9.5/ , 2) mkdir build 3) cd build/ , 4) cmake .. ( cmake ) The text output in the terminal will show, what's included in the configuration / Makefile : tcl/tk , wxwidgets, pyqt4, python, etc. 4) make : will build the binaries and the libraries. My own addition was then sudo make install which *appears* to have worked. I was interested in building it to try the legend code. Is there a reason for the double pointer? It seems that this part\0that part\0...\0and the last part\0\0 would do the job just as easily?? Bill -- Beautiful is writing same markup. Internet Explorer 9 supports standards for HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1, ECMAScript5, and DOM L2 & L3. Spend less time writing and rewriting code and more time creating great experiences on the web. Be a part of the beta today. http://p.sf.net/sfu/beautyoftheweb ___ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
