Re: Qt Wrapper for gnuplot

[Ian R. G. <ge...@kd...>]

Lutz Maibaum said:
>
> Hello Ian,
>
> I'm a frequent user of both gnuplot and KDE, and I was happy to read yo=
u
> email
> to the gnuplot development list. I have little programming experience
> though,
> and I'm not sure if I can offer any valuable help. I can always give it=
 a
> shot, though.
>
> At first sight, I didn't quite understand what you mean by a "KDE
> wrapper".
> From your example, it seems like you are not thinking about a gnuplot G=
UI
> frontend (if you do, you probably want to take a look at Xgfe and qgfe,
> which
> both use Qt), but some sort of plotting widget that uses gnuplot as its
> drawing engine (maybe something like Qwt?).
>
This is more like Xgfe/qgfe than Qwt, since I am using gnuplot via a chil=
d
process.  The difference over *gfe is that I am using bidirectional IO, s=
o
I can get feedback from gnuplot.  I am a big fan of the power of gnuplot,
but the API (or lack there of ;) ) is not so hot.

> If this is so, then maybe you could explain in a little more detail how
> you
> would like to accomplish this. How does the communication between the
> widget
> class and gnuplot work (maybe pipes)? How do you display gnuplot's outp=
ut
> in
> the calling application? I vaguely remember a discussion on the
> gnuplot-beta
> list about the feasibility of a Qt terminal type. Do you want to use
> gnuplot
> in it's interactive mode (zooming, data point labeling, etc.)? I'm sure
> the
> people on the gnuplot-beta list would be interested to know, and can
> probably
> give a lot of helpful tips.
Currently the X11 child window is quite impossible to work with, so I am
just dumping a png to a temp file and then drawing it on the widget.  I
will probably have to implement the zooming, data point labeling and such
manually.

>
> Other points I can think of right now:
>
> - gnuplot has a somewhat unusual license, make sure that it is compatib=
le
> with
> whatever it is you're trying to do.
I'm using it via a child process, but this widget is LGPL at this point.=20
I think that should be okay.
>
> - gnuplot allows execution of arbitrary shell commands within gnuplot
> scripts,
> which might cause security risks.
>
I am hiding this part, so this should not be an issue.

Cheers
   -ian reinhart geiser

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