Re: Text properties and FTGL

[John Swensen]

On Oct 28, 2008, at 10:23 PM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:

> 2008/10/28 Thomas Weber <address@hidden>:
> > Eh, adding TeX as dependency would be the end to all kind of usage
> > pattern:
>
> Well, it wouldn't have to be a hard dependency. Make it a compile-time
> option.  That seems to be the approach for many other of the larger
> components of Octave. TeX is a standard part of a GNU system anyways.
>
> > using it on small machines
>
> A handheld calculator doesn't really need to produce
> publication-quality plots anyways, does it?
>
> Also, I expect most people who use Octave already use LaTeX or TeX. Or
> am I being naïve?
>
> - Jordi G. H.

I have a new alternate solution, that is probably more amenable to  
those who don't want to be tied to a specific toolkit.  It is a  
combination of a couple existing libraries.

1) balhtexml - This is the library used by MediaWiki (same as used by  
Wikipedia) to allow people to use LaTeX code inline with the web  
pages.  They also have a command line tool and a library that could  
easily be linked against directly.
2) gtkmathviewer - Despite having dependencies on GTK, the "core" of  
gtkmathviewer does not depend on GTK and could be ripped out and a  
simple render to a bitmap/pixmap could be done for inclusion into the  
OpenGL plots.

I think in the long run this will look less pretty than the LaTeX  
output, but seems simpler and dependent on less stuff.

John Swensen