Re: Design of next version

[Jay Belanger <belanger@truman.edu>]

"Andrew D. Hwang" <ahwang@mathcs.holycross.edu> writes:

> I'm starting to work more regularly on the design and coding of the next
> major version of ePiX. Some of the goals are:
> 
> 1. Better use of C++
>  (a) Use of classes, the standard library, and namespaces
>  (b) Improved modularity and organization of code
>     For example, plots will no longer be output as they are generated;
>     plot data will be stored in a collection of "1-skeleta" until the
>     entire file is read, then will be printed. 

I'm not sure what a "1-skeleta" is, but I guess, say, a line object
will be kept in memory somewhere until it is "drawn" at the end.  Will
it be possible to manipulate the objects?  Suppose I'm drawing a
couple of lines.  Will I be able to have ePiX find the intersection,
for example (not the best example).

> 2. More runtime-configurable options
>  (a) Choice of output file type (eepic, pstricks, MetaPost...) This is of
>     course facilitated by the separation of data generation from output.

Will some of the functionality of these packages (file types) be
available even if that functionality isn't available in all the
packages?  (Not my best sentence...)

>  (b) Camera position and orientation, and the mapping from "object space"
>     to the viewing plane (for 3-D plotting), with defaults suitable for
>     2-D plotting.
> 
> Logistically, the code will be "released" with version number 0.9.x, which
> should be considered alpha (similarly to the 2.odd.x Linux kernels). Don't
> expect to produce usable figures with 0.9.x (at least not right away). :)

That's not a problem for me; here, the impediment to creating usable
figures is the artist, not the tool.

> Finally had a chance to do some routine updates: Jay Belanger's code for
> shaded plots is included and documented, and there's a "gray()" function
> to set the depth of gray in \shade commands. (Thanks, Jay!)

Yay!  (Actually, the shaded plots are just the original plot with a
line added, but still, Yay!)  I see you had some luck with setting
the gray level.  Great!

Jay