[PyX-user] a PyX application and some questions

[M A. G. <ato...@gm...>]

Hello everyone,

I am a long time PyX user, I used it to prepare some figures in my
thesis back in 2005 and have been using it on and off over the years.
Let me start by expressing my gratitude for building such a nice and
useful tool.

Recently I used PyX for a project of mine, a celestial events almanac:
https://github.com/atakan/PySkyAlmanac
I hope this project can serve to demonstrate the capabilities of PyX.

Using PyX for this project allowed me to notice some fine points that
are not explained in the manual. I resolved the issues I encountered by
trial-error, but I am sure there must be other (and more robust) ways.
Here are a few questions I pondered:
-- Is there a natural way to produce color gradient plots as in the
background of the chart I prepared? I do this by making a graphxyz,
switching off the grid and the axes, and looking at the graph from the top.
-- How is the location and size of a graph determined when it is
inserted to a canvas, as in here? How are the scale and translation
factors calculated?
-- What is the format for dash patterns? In particular what is the size
and the separation of the dots in a dotted line pattern? How does this
change with various parameters, e.g. linewidth?
-- Is there a way to incorporate PStricks into PyX? I needed this for
the textpath feature of PStricks:
http://tug.org/PSTricks/main.cgi?file=Examples/textpath
Maybe something like this can be implemented in PyX?

Thanks again for a very useful tool!

atakan gürkan