Re: xmgrace

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Mon, Jul 05, 2004 at 01:35:36PM -0400, Alan G Isaac wrote:
> So the question of functionality is perhaps two-fold:
> i. is it interesting to the developers to offer easy access
> to external plotting packages?  (And if so, what is the
> right interface, given that many plotting options will need
> to be set?)

It is interesting, but has historically been difficult.
I would have used that type of approach rather than writing
everything ourselves if it had been an option.  This is very much a
'patches are welcome' situation.

> ii. would reliance on some external package, e.g. gnuplot or
> Grace, offer a quicker and more robust path to the graphics
> functionality desired for gnumeric?

In my opinion no.  There are several elements to providing a
spreadsheet style charting interface
    - property pages for editing the charts
    - selecting data from the spreadsheet
    - import/export from multiple formats
    - Rendering the chart for screen, print, and export

Applications like gnuplot or grace handle the last part nicely, but
make the former more difficult as we pass through some sort of IPC.