Re: [Matplotlib-users] scatter with dots?

[Darren D. <dd...@co...>]

On Wednesday 30 November 2005 16:18, John Hunter wrote:
> >>>>> "Carl" == Carl Dr Kleffner <cmk...@gm...> writes:
>
>     Carl> Hi matplot-list, drawing scatterplots with thousends of
>     Carl> scatter dots (marker='o') yields in bloated file sizes for
>     Carl> vector-formats (ps, svg).  The reason for that is, that each
>     Carl> marker circle ist made of a large number of lines instead of
>     Carl> a simple arc (0..360 degree) i.e.
>
>     Carl> Can this be patched easily? and btw what is the meaning of
>     Carl> the _newstyle attribute in the drawing methods?
>
> Originally the backends drew each marker with a separate function
> call, which was slow and prevented optimizations.  We introduced a new
> API to make marker drawing fast, but rather than break all the
> noncompliant backends we left a flag in for newstyle, meaning the new
> API, to determine which method to use.  Unfortunately, this supported
> laziness, and no backends other than *Agg support the new method
> (which can be 25x faster...)  It would also enable you to introduce
> these optimizations, eg postscript macros, if you added it to PS.
> Search the dev archives for newstyle for length discussions.  I'll be
> happy to advise further if you are interested in pursuing this.

I think the draw_markers function already exists for ps, I wrote it up a while 
back, but we ended up masking it when problems arose in the new API.

Darren