Re: RFC: Graphing widgets for GTK+

["Kieran Clancy" <clancy kieran+gnome gmail com>]

On 29/06/07, Michael Lawrence <lawremi iastate edu> wrote:
> That's a very nice outline.
>
> One comment I have is that scientific applications often need to plot large
> amounts of data and require substantial interactivity. Traditional canvas
> designs are probably not efficient for this purpose (ie drawing hundreds of
> thousands of points and updating immediately in response to user
> interaction). I don't know if you want to consider this application in your
> design, but I thought I would mention it.

Performance is very important to me, so it's one of my priorities for
this project. Where possible I will allow graphs to be updated
incrementally, so that large sections don't need to be redrawn.

> For an example of this based on GTK+, see GGobi (http://www.ggobi.org),
> which provides interactive graphics for multivariate data analysis. We are
> currently refactoring the display framework of GGobi for improved clarity,
> flexibility and performance, so your ideas are interesting to us. We would
> love to be able to borrow functionality provided by GTK+ or some related
> library.

While scientific plots are not really the intended scope of this
project, I am certainly interested in making this library as useful as
possible for lots of projects. I may be able to structure the API to
maximize the extensibility of the widgets for purposes such as yours.
Once I have written up the API, I'll invite you to look over it and
let me know the best places I can allow for extensibility.

Thanks for the comments,
Kieran.