Re: GSoC project: new graphics backend

[Shai Ayal]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 4:25 AM, Jonathan Stickel <address@hidden> wrote:

> 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).

I must disagree with you on this point. I agree that plotting WAS good
only for quick plots I think that since moving to having core graphics
in octave, I can produce production quality 2D plots using
octave+gnuplot.

We now (at least from version 3.0.3) have full control over line
widths & fonts, and mouse zooming. The only thing I was missing for my
last "publication quality" plot was control over ticklabel fonts. I
think that with some more effort the fltk backend will be up to speed
and provide even those.

As for VTK, from the examples on their page, I do not consider their
graphics "publication quality", and we are building on established
systems by using OpenGL which does most of the 3D work for us

Shai