VTK (was Re: [Maxima] Maybe some work to make Maxima display much better)

--- James Amundson <amundson@fnal.gov> wrote:
> There is a great deal to discuss about the future for interfaces for
> Maxima. Indeed, part of what got me this far into Maxima was a
> project I've been working on to provide a better user interface to 
> Maxima.
> I'd really rather focus on the basic text-mode of Maxima until at 
> 6.0...

I completely agree.  We have to have a stable, documented platform
before we can try any fancy interface stuff.  I just thought I might as
well put out those suggestions, so people could take a look and see
what they think.  

> That said, I am interested in VTK. I've seen some lovely 3D graphics
> from VTK, but I can't find any examples of 2D plotting. Do you know
of
> any? I think solid 2D plotting is really my first concern.

I don't know of any, except maybe this: 
http://mayavi.sourceforge.net/screenshots/2d_cont.gif  My thought was
if VTK can't handle 2D well enough, we could use something else such as
plplot or gnuplot for 2D, and only bring in VTK for the 3D stuff. The
commands are different, so keeping things straight in a coding sense
shouldn't be too hard (famous last words...)  

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