Re: [help-3dldf] Re: all intersections between two paths *

[lfinsto1]

Martijn van Manen wrote:

> It seems my "mathematical knowledge" - in as far as we
> can speak of it, is considered more important than it
> actually is.

You are at any rate a trained mathematician.
I am no more than a hobby mathematician at a very
low level.

> I'm doing my best, but I'll honestly admit that
> with the 70 hour working week little time is left.

You haven't obligated yourself to anything and I'm grateful
for whatever you contribute.

> Currently I try to get the intersections of conic sections
> right.

That sounds great.

> After that there are the reflection groups/stellations/facetting.
> If there is any other priority to take tell me.

The problem is that I don't know enough yet to understand
your explanations.  The conditions of my life at present
are not really conducive to sitting down and studying.
I have time to work on coding because I'm unemployed.
I'm trying to do as much as I can while conditions allow
it.  If you wanted to work on writing code that implements
finding intersections, for example, that would be a big help.

It would be helpful to me if you and/or others would learn how
to use my development versions and give me some feedback.
As far as I'm concerned, release 1.1.5.1 is obsolete.  The
main reason I haven't released a new version is because I
want to revise the manual.  This is such a big job that I've
decided not to release a new version yet, especially since my
development versions are easily available.

Unless I'm forgetting something, my priorities are finishing
the parser, rewriting the manual, intersections, NURBs,
improving the solid types, surface hiding,
reflections, and writing routines for fast-loading base files.
However, I'm just one person and it's a lot of work.

> I would like to give my opinion about some things.
> The most popular drawing program among mathematicians
> is the infamous "xfig".

The name rings a bell.  I may have the documentation for it
somewhere.  Does it have anything to do with psfig?
I don't use either of them, though.  Once I started using MetaPost
I didn't bother learning any of the other packages for making
PostScript graphics, although they may be very good.

> What one would want for 3DLDF is
> some user interface, to make it easier to code that stuff.
> That would make your program so much more popular.

If someone wants to work on this, I would have no objection,
as long as the terms of the GNU GPL are respected.

GNU 3DLDF is intended to implement an interpreter for a
Metafont-like language for 3D graphics;  no more, no less.
I originally thought it would probably only be of interest to
people who were already using Metafont and/or MetaPost.  I get
the impression that this isn't so, but my information is very
spotty.

> It should be targeted towards use with latex. Latex is
> the formatting program of choice in theoretical physics/mathematics
> and fairly popular in other exact domains.

I use TeX rather than LaTeX.  LaTeX serves a useful purpose for
many people, but I strongly prefer programming my own formats on the
basis of plain TeX.

> That is a priority as far as I know, but then, what
> I know is very little.

The graphics produced using 3DLDF can be included in LaTeX files.
Therefore, I don't see any need for special LaTeX support
within the GNU 3DLDF package.  On the other hand, if someone wants to
add it, he or she is welcome to do so.  However, it would potentially
be a major investment of time and effort, since that person would
have to make sure that changes to 3DLDF don't break the LaTeX
support.  I don't consider this a priority and I
would prefer that a volunteer work on something else.  On the other
hand, if someone really wanted to do this, I would be willing to
check the code and merge it into the package, as long as this didn't
create too much work for me.

Laurence