[Plplot-devel] A new interactive "iup" device based on the IUP library?

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

The IUP library (see <http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/iup/> and
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUP_(software)>) has recently been
discussed on the CMake developer's mailing list as a light-weight
replacement for the GUI needed for cmake-gui (which is currently Qt
based).

So I thought I should bring this library to the attention of device
driver developers here. The key characteristics of this library are it
is very small, it is MIT licensed, and it provides a uniform IUP GUI
API that wraps one of the following list of backend possibilities that are
available now:

UNIX (SunOS, IRIX, and AIX) using Motif 2.x
UNIX (FreeBSD and Linux) using GTK+ (since 3.0)
Microsoft Windows XP/2003/Vista/7 using the Win32 API

It appears there is a lot of developer interest in this library
because of the above characteristics so, for example, one of the
posters on the CMake developer's list mentioned he was writing a
CMake-based build system for IUP and also a IUP wrapper for the native
Mac OS X GUI (which would make this a truly cross-platform library).
Because of such developer enthusiasm, I also suspect it only a matter
of time until even more IUP backend graphical libraries are supported
such as Qt and wxWidgets.

Also, GTK+ and the Win32 API (when using GDI/GDI+/Uniscribe or
Direct2D/DirectWrite) (and Qt and wxWidgets) all support native unicode fonts and complex
text layout.  A google search for

unicode site:http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/iup/

shows 10 hits and what appears to be full cross-platform support for
the utf-8 encoding of unicode by the IUP library.

A similar search for the "complex text layout" or "CTL" terms found
nothing relevant, but complex text layout is completely in the
domain of the backend graphical libraries and nothing to
do with the IUP API so I suspect users of this potential device
would enjoy complete CTL support.

In sum, there is no deep urgency to create an IUP-based interactive
device driver for PLplot, but IUP is cross-platform (including Mac OS
X soon) and supports utf-8 and (likely) CTL just like our best device
drivers (i.e., svg, qt, cairo, wxwidgets) currently do.  Thus, the IUP
library provides a pretty interesting possibility for supporting a new
interactive device of extremely high quality. So if someone here is
interested in developing an "iup" device I would certainly encourage
that effort.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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