Re: [matplotlib-devel] Native backend for Mac OS X

[Christopher B. <Chr...@no...>]

Michiel de Hoon wrote:
> I wrote a backend for matplotlib on Mac OS X. This is a native
> backend for Mac OS X

very nice!

> 4) One drawback compared to the existing cocoa-agg backend is that
> the latter allows easy integration of matplotlib into a larger cocoa
> application, whereas my backend only cares about matplotlib.

well, as far as many of us are concerned, matplotlib IS an embeddable 
plotting package. I suppose you could say that your backend only cares 
about pylab.

Is there any possibility to embed it in another app? I know that wx, for 
instance, can pass a Window handle to other libs, so that you can have 
that window managed and drawn by other code, while wx handles the rest 
of the app -- would this kind of thing be possible with your code with 
wx, and Cocoa, and QT, and ? I imagine GTK would be off the table as it 
is using X11, though I suppose if you are using Apple's X11, it could 
even be possible there.

> Whereas matplotlib has a vastly superior range of high-level plotting
>  capabilities, pygist excelled at sheer speed. This was achieved by 
> having three backends (Windows, Mac OS X, X11) written in C for 
> optimal performance,

I'm still curious where all this speed comes from. MPL already uses Agg 
for a lot, and it's generally reported to be as fast as many native 
drawing APIs (though maybe not quartz?)

-Chris



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Chr...@no...