[matplotlib-devel] ANN: backend_agg v 0.000001

[John H. <jdh...@ac...>]

The agg backend

  Features that are implemented

    * capstyles and join styles
    * dashes
    * linewidth 
    * lines, rectangles, ellipses, polygons
    * clipping to a rectangle
    * output to RGBA and PNG
    * alpha blending
    * DPI scaling -  (dashes, linewidths, fontsizes, etc)
    * freetype1

  TODO:
     * use ttf manager to get font - right now I just use Vera

  INSTALLING 

   Grab the latest matplotlib from
   http://nitace.bsd.uchicago.edu:8080/files/share/matplotlib-0.50l.tar.gz

  REQUIREMENTs

    python2.2+
    Numeric 22+
    agg2 (see below)
    freetype 1
    libpng
    libz ?
    
  Install AGG2 (cut and paste below into xterm should work)

    wget http://www.antigrain.com/agg2.tar.gz
    tar xvfz agg2.tar.gz
    cd agg2
    make

    (Optional) if you want to make the examples:
    cd examples/X11
    make

  Installing backend_agg

   Edit setup.py: change aggsrc to point to the agg2 src tree and
   replace if 0: with if 1: in the backend_agg section

   Then just do the usual thing: python setup.py build

   Please let me know if you encounter build problems, and tell me
   platform, gcc version, etc...  Currently the paths in setupext.py
   assume as linux like filesystem (eg X11 include dir, location of
   libttf, etcc) so you may need to tweak these.  

  Using agg backend

    python somefile.py -dAgg   

  or

    import matplotlib
    matplotlib.use('Agg')
      
Let me know how it works out!  Note also that backend agg is the first
backend to support alpha blending; see scatter_demo2.py.

JDH