Mathematical Visualization Toolkit / News: Recent posts

Finally!!! Added all the files required for the Hidden Line Removal in Surface
plotting. It's all there, it required adding the Renderer objects that contain
all surfaces of a certain type.

it also allows plotting of transparent & opaque surfaces on the same graph, as w
ell as allowing multi-color line plots for transparent surfaces.

improvements to be made:
* HLR w/ different color surfaces
* optimize the HLR algorithm, (lots of junk in there)
* perhaps cut down on the number of vars used
* cut out the public member variables... read more

OK I'm done tinkering, I promise. I have reorganize the whole directory structure so that there are two distinict packages: a math package and an mvt package. The math package can stand on its own; while the mvt package requires the math package.

All tools have been standardized so that they work the same way using the same abstract functions. So now, once you figure out how one tool works, the rest will be easy to understand. ... read more

Well many things may not be so apprent in the actual functional capabilities of the MVT since last time, but everything is different on the inside. The tools.* directory has been cleaned out and refactored.

Now, all tools inherit from ToolPanel (instead of the ToolFrame which derived from JInternalFrame). This will help the Dillard effort in that now they will not be limited behavior of an Internal Frame. Also, the TabbedGraphicsPane class has been removed entirely; and any type of tool (a plotting tool, numerical tool, linear algebra tool) can be tabbed. It is all sorted out in the consructor object. ... read more

Varying matrix tools based on the JAMA package have been implemented in the MVT under the Tools->Linear Algebra Tools menu. We have a linear system solver, a matrix analyzer (that finds determinants, eigenvalues, inverses) and a matrix decomposer (that finds LU, SVD, QR, & many other decomositions). Everything works fine, except that m x n matrcies with m < n cannot be decomposed. The reason is that there is a bug in the underlying JAMA software; I am currently trying to contact the JAMA authors to either get a bug fix or discover that I'll have to write the bug fix myself. ... read more

Just minutes ago, the MVT bug tracking system has gone online. There is a link to the bug submission page on the mvt2.0 website at:

http://amath.colorado.edu/java/mvt2.0/

Submitted bugs are appended to a bugs.xml file, and then the list of bugs can be viewed from going to

http://amath.colorado.edu/java/mvt2.0/getbugs.html

This way, a developer/manager can periodically check the list of submitted bugs, and then update the list on SourceForge without repeating or creating false bug reports.... read more

The MVT now has a print preview window that pops up for graphical plotting tools & for printing the help pages. It lets the user see how many pages are being printed, allows the user to change page setup options such as margins, and shows a thumbnail picture of what is going to be printed. This should work fine for both the applet & application, feel free to test it out at:
http://amath.colorado.edu/java/mvt2.0/

The MVT now has a new help system, thanks to Patrick on that one. We adapted a very nice Help GUI that has:
* searchable topics
* back/forward buttons
* print option
It is currently using the previously designed MVT help pages, but we plan on improving them at the end of the summer (time permitting).

The developments teams for the MVT & Dillard projects are having lunch at SunMicrosystems Wednesday May 29. We are planning to leave about 11:30am. Be sure to know how to answer the question: "What have you done for Sun today?"

We have decided to try to create our own 3-D graphics tools instead of using the Java3D optional package for several reasons. First, it creates an extra hassle for the end user - large download and installation. Second, the Java3D facilities may be "overkill" for the 3-D features we need in the MVT. The java development team is going to spend approximately a week trying to get this to work, and if we find that speed becomes an issue with our own code; we can always decide to support Java3D. That's all for the first MVT Summer update.... read more