Re: XForms: Printing of xyplots?

Fritz Zaucker (zaucker@ee.ethz.ch)
14 Aug 1997 10:30:20 +0200

To subscribers of the xforms list from Fritz Zaucker <zaucker@ee.ethz.ch> :

"Dr. T.C. Zhao" <zhao@bragg.phys.uwm.edu> writes:

> Making xforms device independent in the sense that it can render to
> both X and PostScript is actually a lot simpler than one might
> think. On the object level (FL_DRAW handling for example), X is not
> really visible and drawing primitives (fl_line, fl_poly, fl_drw_box,
> fl_drw_text etc.) are not that many. fd2ps already has most of the
> ps supporting functions there (ps_line, ps_poly, ps_draw_box,
> ps_draw_tex etc), I only need to change fl_line, fl_drw_box
> etc. into a function pointer and switch to flx_drw_box or ps_drw_box
> depending what the context is (X or PostScript).

I guess this an example of a really good software design ...

> What I don't like about this is that it bloats xforms and I can't
> quite justify addint it to the xforms proper, I mean how often do
> people want to generate a postscript version of the GUI ?

I completely agree, this I was never asking for.

> Of course, xyplot and charts are kind of special, and adding a
> postscript output option (say, fl_xyplot_dump(FL_OBJECT *, const
> char *ps_filename)) might not be too bad an idea.

As far as I am concerned, this is exactly what I was hoping for! I am
using Xforms for a application controlling a mass spec. Within the
application the aquired data are plotted in an xyplot object and
should be optionally printed as well.

Could you give any indication if and perhaps when you would be able to
implement such a feature?

Of course, as one of the previous posters mentioned it is not too hard
to implement simple PS-output routines (possibly using some
ps-libraries). However, it means reimplementing a lot of stuff (axis-design
and text placement are notoriously annoying tasks) that with the above
approach could just be recycled.

Best regards,
Fritz

-- 
Dr. Fritz Zaucker, Head IT Support Group 
Departement of Electrical Engineering,      Federal Institute of Technology
ETZ J97, Gloriastrasse 35, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Tel.: +41-1-632-5241	Fax: +41-1-632-1194  http://www.ee.ethz.ch/~zaucker/
E-mail: zaucker@ee.ethz.ch (see home page for PGP key)
_________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send the message "unsubscribe" to
xforms-request@bob.usuf2.usuhs.mil or see
http://bob.usuf2.usuhs.mil/mailserv/xforms.html
Xforms Home Page: http://bragg.phys.uwm.edu/xforms
List Archive: http://bob.usuf2.usuhs.mil/mailserv/list-archives/