Re: new snapshot?

[Shai Ayal]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 2:43 PM, Ben Abbott <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> On Feb 18, 2010, at 6:37 AM, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
>
> > hi all,
> >
> > it's been 5 months and almost 700 changesets since 3.3.50. What about
> > a new snapshot now?
> > Regarding 3.4.0, I'd like to still try to address at least these two 
> > projects:
> >
> > 1. merge the MArray classes
> > 2. legends in FLTK backend
> >
> > 1 is straightforward, just wants some code manipulation to do. 2 will
> > probably be a more difficult task.
> >
> > Any other projects to be completed prior to 3.4.0?
>
> Regarding the legends, current the gnuplot backend uses gnuplot's legend 
> feature. For compatibility the legend should be constructed as an instance of 
> an axes object. What I'm leading up to is that I expect most of the work will 
> be agnostic to the backend, and should work with gnuplot as well.
>
> There are (were?) two missing features that I expect would make the job of 
> implementing a compatible legend easier.
>
> (1) Method to determine the "extent" property for text objects

The extent property for text objects should be available even if the
object has not been rendered yet, so we cannot rely on the backend
setting this property auto-magically (the backend sees new objects for
the first time only when they are rendered).

What I've come up with is two ways to determine the extent property:
1. add some a method to the backend class to get the extent of a text
object from the backend (this has to be done independent of whether
the text object has been rendered)
2. add extent calculations into core octave (making octave depend on
e.g. freetype)

In both cases, I don't see how this can be done with gnuplot. Does
anyone have any idea? Did I miss anything?

Shai