A handle graphics project has started.

Hi. 

I am refering to an earlier post at octave-grapics dated 9. November 2003.

My brother has started on his handle graphics implementation, 
which is a bachelor thesis and should be used as suggestion how such implementation should be. 
I can already today say that it's very promising. 

We had a kick-off meeting yesterday. 
 
I can tell so far that a change in Octave, is required. 
It will be even more flexible regarding visualisation application to use. 
The choice is pretty much left over to the user, and his/her taste. 

There will be a internal storage of handle graphics objects inside Octave, and every visualisation application are using this interface, among other specific visualisation functions.

We need also to have a smart solution concerning memory usage, speed and of course flexibility and extensibility.. 
This is very important, and has a high priority. 

We do have a mock up of handle graphics internally to Octave as today.
And we are still writing some documentation (10 pages are written as today) about this, 
so the octave community can give their opinions and suggestions, which can make it even better.
This should be a very iterative way how to make things.
 
We will send it to the involved parties as soon as possible, and give a link, where this document can be found.   
We need to make it work satisfactory with gnuplot, which is a default visualisation application in Octave, and so it should be. 

We are really hoping that this will push Octave over the edge, to become a highly used simulation application, both for scientists and other users.  

There should also be possible to expand this handle graphics functionality to cover other things, 
but first thing first...if you what I mean..

Cheers, 

Ole J.



On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 02:55:35 +0100
Ole Jacob Hagen <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi. 
> 
> I can proudly announce that a project, which will make Octave able to use Matlab's handle graphics will start in January 2004.
> This is a bachelor-thesis/major, where one of the tasks is to implement handle graphics in Octave. 
> 
> This handle graphics package in Octave,
>  will support the most basic handle graphics for starters, but will be maintained and developed further.
> Graphics objects which will be supported first are; 
> 
> 1. axes
> 2. figure
> 3. root
> (4. surface)
> 
> This handle graphics package, will be a generalized handle graphics, so it will fit any visualization libraries, with minor modification. 
> It will be found a good protocol for both pipe-communication and socket-communication, but it will link to Oplot++ for starters. 
> 
> Wether a link should be pipe, unix domain socket or tcp/ip, and visualization application to use should be decided by user, by writing the configuration in a file, which should be started during startup of Octave. 
> 
> Later a GUI for Octave should be made, and the handle graphics should be a part of that gui, shouldn't it?
> 
> I've learned that a guy called Nimrod made a nice base for handle graphics, but unfortunatly it's developed using gtk.
>  
> Any comments? 
> 
> 
> Cheers, 
> 
> Ole J. 
>