Re: [Opengrads-devel] Proof of concept: grads 2.0.a3 100% under JVM

[Brian D. <do...@co...>]

Hi Arlindo, this seems to have potential implications for the GDS.    
Regarding java graphics, there are no doubt some nice libraries out  
there these days but I have not been keeping up with that area.   
Pedro Tsai, about 10 years ago, wrote a grads client/server setup in  
java which included some graphics output of the grads graphics  
primitives (this was a precursor to the GDS).  I have that code  
around somewhere and I can find it if you think it might be useful  
for this.  You don't need to support a whole lot to get most of the  
graphics output working.

Take a look in gxmeta.c, at function gxhdrw.  It redraws the internal  
buffer and draws all the primitives.  Look at the code starting with  
the comment "Get message type".  If you support color, polygon,  
rectangle (separate from polygon for performance), and line drawing,  
you get almost all of the graphics.  Line thickness is also nice (can  
easily be soft generated too).

Even though GrADS has been all X11 for a while now, it didn't start  
that way and I have wanted to avoid being locked into that, thus this  
fairly simple interface has survived.  I don't expect to redesign  
this in any substantial way but I do want to add text strings and  
font selection as new primitives (with appropriate fall-back to the  
Hershey fonts when needed).  Anyone out there still using gv32?  It's  
not going to work much longer.... Brian

On Dec 12, 2008, at 11:17 PM, Arlindo da Silva wrote:

> All,
>
>    I just refreshed
>
>        http://opengrads.org/devel/grads2/grads.jar
>
> It is getting quite functional now: grib-1, grib-2, netcdf, hdf,  
> printim. Still no readline, x11 or opendap; see output of "q  
> config" below. This is all 100% java (no JNI), it should run anywhere.
>
> Brian:  I know you are thinking about redesigning the graphical  
> engine in grads. Do you have any thoughts on how one could handle  
> the graphics in Java? Currently, I have gxX.c stubbed out. I was  
> thinking about implementing "gxX.c" in java around JPanel.
>
>     Arlindo
>
>
> ga>  q config
> Config: v2.0.a3.oga.2dev big-endian printim grib2 netcdf hdf4-sds
> Grid Analysis and Display System (GrADS) Version 2.0.a3.oga.2dev
> Copyright (c) 1988-2008 by Brian Doty and the
> Institute for Global Environment and Society (IGES)
> This program is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY
> See file COPYRIGHT for more information.
>
> Built Sat Dec 13 00:32:59 BRST 2008 for mips-unknown-elf
>
> This version of GrADS has been configured with the following options:
>   o Built on a BIG ENDIAN machine
>   o Command line editing DISABLED
>   o printim command for image output ENABLED
>       http://www.zlib.net
>       http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
>       http://www.libgd.org/Main_Page
>   o GRIB2 interface ENABLED
>       http://www.ijg.org
>       http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/jasper
>       http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/codes/GRIB2
>       g2clib-1.0.5
>   o NetCDF interface ENABLED
>       http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf
>       netcdf "3.6.2" of Dec 11 2008 22:17:25 $
>   o NCSA HDF interface ENABLED
>       http://hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu
>       HDF4.2r3
>   o Athena Widget GUI DISABLED
>   o OPeNDAP gridded data interface DISABLED
>   o OPeNDAP station data interface DISABLED
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 12:38 AM, Arlindo da Silva  
> <da...@al...> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>   I was able to created a prototype build of grads v2 that runs  
> entirely under the JVM:
>
>        http://opengrads.org/devel/grads2/grads.jar
>
>   To try it out:
>
>       java -cp grads.jar grads
>
>   Most external libraries have been disabled at this point, even X.  
> However, you can do things like
>
>   ga> open model.ctl
>   ga> d ts
>   ga> print ts.eps
>
> It feels quite usable on my MacPro laptop, speed-wise I mean. What  
> do you think? Here is the best part of it:
>
>   numer of grads source code lines modified: 0, except for the  
> replacing gxX.c with the attached stubs.
>   number of build script lines modified: 0
>
> Jennifer: you may want to carry the gxX.c stubs along with the  
> sources code and have a --disbale-X11 during configure. This is  
> very useful to create binaries for machines that do not provide X11  
> (say many computer centers disable X11 at the compute nodes).
>
> Here is the tool that I used:
>
>        http://nestedvm.ibex.org/
>
> Building this gcc toolchain on Mac OS X 10.5  is kind of tricky,  
> talk to me before attempting to do it yourself. I'll post notes  
> about it at some point. It may be simpler on Linux, but I have not  
> tried it myself.
>
> Beware: this is rough, just a proof of concept for now; however I'd  
> be interested in hearing about problems. Soon we may be able to run  
> grads on cell phones.
>
>   Arlindo
>
>
> -- 
> Arlindo da Silva
> da...@al...
>
>
>
> -- 
> Arlindo da Silva
> da...@al...