Re: [guppi-list] where to begin

[Jon Trowbridge <trow emccta com>]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2000 at 03:03:59PM +0200, Daniel Kottow wrote:
> ...maybe you can clarify a bit the relationships between plugins,
> libraries and specifically libguppitank.

OK, I'll try.

The plug-ins contain specific functionality: the actual code that
renders bar charts, axes, scatter plots, etc.

The libraries contain all of the basic infrastructure for Guppi: the
data model, base types for plot elements, convenience functions, etc.
The Guppi API is defined here.

libguppitank is a convenience library that is meant to provide a way
to use Guppi from inside of a C program while being insulated from the
full (and substantial) complexity of the general Guppi API.


So if you are going to use Guppi to embed graphs in a C program, I'd
recommend using libguppitank.  It has some docs (which is better than
the rest of the code, which is regrettably still undocumented),
promises binary compatibility between Guppi versions, and insulates
you from Guppi API changes.

Now if you want to do something exotic, you'll need to use the
full-blown Guppi API, but libguppitank is designed to cover the common
cases.

-JT

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