New octaviz

Hello all,

(I hope it's OK to announce at this mailing list)

Latest release of octaviz (visualization system for octave) is available
at
http://vision.gel.ulaval.ca/~tdragan/octaviz.html.

This version brings multithreading support so that visualization system
doesn't block octave. Presently, the multithreading works only in X window
system but there should be no major problems making it work with Windows
(with cygwin should be easy) and MacOs (volunteers welcome). The first
part of the project, i.e. integration of vtk with octave, is now
(feature-wise) complete. There is however work left to do, mainly
debugging, code cleanups, proper configuration scripts, build system, and
possibly integration in vtk/octave official sources. As soon as it is
done, I'll start building graphic system in octave in order to emulate
m**lab's graphic system. As example of how the final version should look
like, the function trisurf now displays the bounding box, axes and labels
(see the screenshot at http://vision.gel.ulaval.ca/~tdragan/octaviz.html).
 

Octaviz is still in experimental phase but quite usable. For those who are
familiar with VTK it should be very easy to use. The syntax is similar to
the syntax in C++ and identical to Python (once again thanks to Paul
Kienzle who made it possible). If you want to try vtk in octave you can
use vtk's Python examples with almost no changes. Just remove "vtk." from
Python scripts and it should run in octave (vtk.ClassName creates a new
instance of ClassName in Python. In octave, a new instance is created by
calling Classname without parameters). Finally, to speed up the
compilation do "export CXXFLAGS=" to disable optimization when compiling
.oct files.

As always, comments, suggestions and bug reports are most welcome.

Cheers,

Dragan