Re: [guppi-list] Re: piechart component project

[Havoc Pennington <rhp zirx pair com>]

On Mon, 29 Mar 1999, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> 
> If I understand this correctly, this sepereated the data into
> values (data pool) and label, axis describtion and parameters (plot state).
> This occurs to be as not keeping the methods and the corresponding 
> data together. I still have to do some thinking to it.
>

This is required because the same data may appear in more than one plot.
 
> Currently Frank, Jan and I are setting up our development environments
> and learning to use them, because we all might work on different 
> operating systems.  (UWM here uses OSF1/alpha machines and most 
> development tools are not installed.)
> We will definetly have a look at guppi, though it seems to 
> be a bit difficult to get the develpment version out of CVS and running.
> 

guppi is easy, Gnome can be a bit tricky. Get gnome-libs installed, then
for Guppi you need:

Guile 1.3 (available from GNU, ftp.gnu.org)
gnome-xml module from CVS or from the tarballs distributed with Gnome
goose module from CVS
guppi2 module from CVS.

Make sure you get 'guppi2' and not 'guppi,' 'guppi' will not work.

> This is, what I read out of the webpages. Good to know it is correct. ;)
> We will probably take our time to come up with some design for piecharts
> then.
>

But look at the guppi2 code first if you want to use it. There is a fairly
extensive framework in place. 
 
Of course you can make a separate pie chart component, but it seems a
little silly.

> The two important things different from our goals with creating
> a piechart package are:
> 	- A general API of using chart programs with other programs
> 		two levels:
> 			file communication for data and commands

I am not sure what you mean here. Guppi can save to a file though, if that
is all.

> 			direct communication over CORBA or COM


This is what Guppi is intended to have.

> 	- Portability
> 		All the gome components used are fine,
> 		but we would need them seperately.
> 		This especially holds true for the GUI part.
> 		And the scripting part.
>

Yes, Guppi is organized this way.
 
> We three do not have much experience with guile and GnomeCanvas at
> all, so expect slow progress. 
>

Look at 'libguppi', this is the part which is not attached to Gnome or
Guile.
 
> > Unfortunately the Guppi source code is not very well organized right now;
> Which would help in get us started faster.
> 

I have written a little bit of documentation in guppi2/doc, have a look at
that. (Use info -f guppi-internals.info to read it.)

I have also organized the source code a bit more to separate out the
Gnome, Guile, and frontend-independent portions.

Havoc