Re: [Axiom-developer] axiom graphics and porting

[Camm Maguire]

Greetings!

"Page, Bill" <address@hidden> writes:

> In the context of this discussion let me recall a much earlier
> email from Mike Dewar:
> 
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2002-11/msg00151.html
> 
> Re: [Axiom-developer] Windows front end
> Subject:      Re: [Axiom-developer] Windows front end
> Date:         Fri, 29 Nov 2002 10:24:19 +0000
> 
> On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 10:35:20AM -0500, Tim Daly wrote:
> <snip> 
> > Mike Dewar wrote:
> > I'm happy to hear that work was done to make the graphics more open.
> > One of the stated goals on the homepage is to "give away" the graphics.
> > I was planning to enhance the abilities of some other open source
> > product (like GNUPlot) with the facilities available in Axiom. That
> > way they gain with new function and we gain because we don't have to
> > support the graphics any more.
> 
> I think we looked at GNUPlot and decided it wasn't good enough because
> it lacked many of the features for manipulating 3D images that were in
> the Unix version.  Using Open Inventor/VRML means you can export images
> to industrial-strength visualisation packages which was important to us.
> After we released Axiom under Windows, Maple moved their graphics onto
> OpenGL (the toolkit Open Inventor is built on) so we're not the only
> people who think that this is a good approach :-) Of course GNUplot has
> probably come a long way since we looked at it and may be suitable for
> your needs, but I doubt its as good as Mathematica and Maple's
> offerings.
> 

This is the concrete issue that needs to be worked out at this point,
IMHO.  It would be a great service if someone could detail exactly
what graphics manipulations axiom relies on, and compares this list
with the most recent gnuplot's (version 4 if I recall) abilities.
Then we can see which is more 'industrial-strength' in the open source
world, an important consideration, IMHO.  Needless to say, this term
is not synonymous with commercial.

Take care,


-- 
Camm Maguire                                            address@hidden
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