Re: [guppi-list] component design?

[Jon Trowbridge <trow emccta com>]

On Mon, Dec 13, 1999 at 03:07:44PM +0000, Hassan Aurag wrote:
> Well, my question is simple, I am wondering whether to wait for Guppi 
> or not?

It depends on how patient you are :-)

> Here goes then:
> 
> Will guppi be modularized? I mean by this that it'd be nice if there 
> was a component of guppi that would only do rendering through possibly 
> a canvas widget!

Well, it will be modularized in at least two ways.

(1) Bonoboification --- but I don't really understand what is involved
    with that, so I'm hoping that some other clueful person will be
    able to do the majority of this work.

(2) All of the real functionality of guppi3 is divided between several
    shared libraries.  The actual application is just "glue" that
    pieces it all together.  There shouldn't be any reason why your
    apps couldn't link against those libs to directly provide
    guppi-like functionality.  Of course, this is a real moving target
    right now, and probably will be for a while.

    All of the plotting stuff is (and will be) canvas based --- so
    each plot (or "layer" of a plot) and each other visual element
    (like axes, for example) will be its own canvas item.  So you
    could create these just like any other canvas item and do with
    them what you will.

> If we have this, then other programs might be able to embed this guppi 
> module into their stuff to be able to plot things! 

This is the plan.  My understanding is that the gnumeric people have
moved away from using guppi for plotting, and are developing their own
stuff.  This makes sense, since they are interested in "cloning" Excel
as much as possible.  I personally find Excel's plotting incredibly
ass-backward, and want no part of it. 

> In other words again, it would be nice to have a guppi class separated 
> from other things that'd have plot parametricplot 2d and 3d which 
> would return a CanvasGroup, then folks would just pack this into a box 
> and show it!

Yup.  Now 3d is another matter.  I'm sticking to strictly 2d for now,
though 3d stuff rattles around in the back of my mind from time to
time.  IMHO, the only logical way to handle 3d would be to use
OpenGL.  I know there is an OpenGL gtk+ widget out there somewhere,
but I'm not sure if there is an OpenGL canvas item or anything like
that.  

> Of course nothing forbids having a small legend in this widget saying 
> that it was done by guppi?

Yes.  If you don't do this, expect GuppiSoft Inc. to send a pack of
rabid lawyers after you. :-)

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