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Re: GSoC project: new graphics backend


From: Jonathan Stickel
Subject: Re: GSoC project: new graphics backend
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:25:51 -0600
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (X11/20090105)

On 03/26/2009 address@hidden wrote:
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:25:26 +0300 From: Arseniy Lartsev <address@hidden> Subject: Re: GSoC project: new graphics backend To: address@hidden Message-ID: <address@hidden> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> On Tuesday 24 March 2009 15:33:59 Eric S. Carlson wrote:
> > I think that it is a very bad idea to make it a general requirement for > > octave. That said, making these packages options as part of separate shells
> > or IDEs may not be so bad.
Mayavi seems to rely on VTK so I'd better use VTK directly, for both 3D and 2D.


If you are not already familiar with Octaviz, please take a look:

http://octaviz.sourceforge.net/

Octaviz is a 3D visualization "add-on" to octave that uses VTK. Development and maintenance for Octaviz has recently stalled due to lack of a developer who knows c++ and bison.

In regard to JWE's comments that graphics should not be provided as an add-on, I would like to point out a couple things that have been bothering me for some time now:

Plotting in Octave is pathetic, in my opinion. Among other things, 2D plotting should provide complete control over the style of data points and lines. Mouse control for things like zooming would be nice. Octave has experienced some regression here. 3D plotting should look great, provide text, and have mouse controls. Octave plotting is OK for quick plots to see what my data looks like, but I've come to realize recently that to get publication quality plots, I must resort to saving my data and plotting in a 3rd party program (gnuplot, matplotlib, mayavi, etc).

Until there is serious improvement, users/developers will continue to try to implement various hacks to get plotting to work how they think it should. Mostly this includes attempts to interface with plotting and visualization systems *that already work*. Why reinvent the wheel? Why not use libraries like VTK that provide a well established and well used interface for providing visualizations with axes, text, and mouse controls?

I know what you will say: it won't happen without volunteer help. I am interested in helping, but the graphics system has become so complicated, due to the effort to implement handle-graphics, that it is practically impossible for me to get started. I say forget handle graphics, at least for now. Instead, effort should be made to get plotting and visualization to work first, in whatever form, and then add handle graphics or other Matlab compatible features.

Regards,
Jonathan


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