[clean-list] Re:(digest) RE: Clean and scientific programming

[Siegfried Gonzi]

Jerzy Karczmarczuk <karczma@info.unicaen.fr> writes:


> My three euro-cents on that (JUST on that).

3 Groschen from Austria:

>    This is *much* easier in an  environment specifically designed to be inter-
>    active. The PLOT data structure in Maple, or "Handle graphic" objects in
>    Matlab make it really easy to change ploting attributes without repeating
>    the numeric/geometric work done (and of course without recompiling anything).

Would it be possible to link to an existent plotting library? I mean,
this is what all the time the Python guys are doing.

I am absolutely clueless concerning "gluing together" applications. But
in Clean it is possible to call foreign C functions, therefore it should
be possible to link to plotting packages (maybe not implemented fully
yet).

 
> simply: I have no idea how to convert a Picture into a
>    bitmap (or a metafile with plot descriptors), and save it. I know how to
>    make a bitmap manually (and how to save it on a file), but this is wrong
>    approach.

A few weeks ago I contacted a Clean team member with the question about
bitmaps and whether a future I/O version will include it. I got the
advice to start a discussion on the Clean mailinglist, but I have been
hesitating, because I am not a specialist on that field. And I cannot
require or suggest further improvements when I do not have at least a
basic unterstanding of the topic. I only red a few chapters in "Inside
Macintosh", but this is completely insane (pointers, pointer to pointers
and so forth).

What I noticed is that on the Sun (even on the oldest ones) the
graphical display, e.g. the Mandelbrot demo, is much, much faster as on
a Macintosh. Maybe this is due to the X-window system on the Sun. And
there is also no delay when one window becomes updated.

I do not see the trees for the wood, but all interested in graphics
programming should deposit what they expect from an I/O system.

I am not sure how Java handles a platform independet GUI and display
system and whether we can learn from it.


S. Gonzi