Re: Asymptote

[Ryszard Tanas <tanas@zon1.physd.amu.edu.pl>]

On Thu, 6 Jan 2005, Andrew D. Hwang wrote:

> In early November, the Asymptote project was announced on freshmeat:
>
>   http://freshmeat.net/projects/asy
>
> Judging from the sample files in the image gallery, Asymptote looks like a
> robust, well-designed meshing of Metapost's capabilities with the power of
> C++. (It's coded from scratch, but the input syntax seems fairly similar to
> Metapost.) Asymptote requires the boost library and gcc-3.4, so I haven't
> installed it myself, but I'd be interested if anyone else has. :)
>
> Happy New Year!
>
> --Andy
>
> Andrew D. Hwang			ahwang@mathcs.holycross.edu
> Department of Math and CS	http://math.holycross.edu/~ahwang
> College of the Holy Cross	(508) 793-2458 (Office: 320 Swords)
> Worcester, MA, 01610-2395	(508) 793-3530 (fax)
>
>

Dear Andy,

I have instaled Asymptote and tried the examples. It looks promising, the
syntax is quite simple, at least for 2D pictures. However, it is usually no
problem with 2D graphics, but the situation is much worse with good
quality 3D graphics. The version 0.55 of Asymptote uses temporarily
package featpost3D from MetaPost for 3D graphics, before the
Asymptote native package graph3d will be released. In my view,
functionality of the package for drawing 3D graphics is not impressive. I
hope graph3d will improve it! Anyway, I will follow development of this
package.

Andy, at the moment functionality of ePiX in 3D graphics is, in my
opinion, much better, so do not give up on development of it.

Happy New Year!
                    Ryszard

-- 
      Ryszard Tanas                       <mailto:tanas@kielich.amu.edu.pl>
 Nonlinear Optics Division                <mailto:tanas@main.amu.edu.pl>
 Institute of Physics                      Phone: +48 61 829-5184
 Adam Mickiewicz University                Fax: +48 61 829-5167
 Umultowska 85, 61-614 Poznan, Poland     <URL=http://zon8.physd.amu.edu.pl/>