Re: [PyX-devel] Two other things that might be nice...

[Magnus L. H. <ma...@he...>]

Joerg Lehmann <jo...@us...>:
>
> While I'm not necessarily against doing so, I still think that having
> native support for some of the more popular vector formats is really a
> good idea. Consider for instance the transparency support, which does
> not exist in PostScript. How would you like to do that with
> a converter.

Sure, sure! I'm definitely *not* arguing against native support. This
was more like a temporary (or additional) feature.

If PyX could do SVG, that would be *excellent*. Imagine real tex
layout, transparency and filters in one and the same figure... Wooo.
:)

[snip]
> I think that we should focus on vector graphic formats which are built
> according to the PostScript model, which has already been quite well
> abstracted in PyX.

Yep; sounds very reasonable (as I also said elsewhere).

> But lowest common denominator would exclude things like transpacerency.

You are right. (It would have to be a "sliding scale" sort of thing, I
guess -- but that would also have to be the case with PyX supporting
SVG alongside PS, for example.)

> [snip]
> > Sure. PostScript, PDF and SVG are all part of the same happy family.
> > PDF is a dumbing down of PostScript with a more ugly syntax, and SVG
> > wraps that the PDF syntax in XML attributes... (And adds lots of
> > stuff, of course.) ;)
>=20
> Well said. The more I've learnt about PDF and SVG there more I've becom=
e
> a PostScript fan.

Yes. PostScript is one of my favourite languages -- and not just
graphics languages. It's a pretty little programming language too. The
other two just really suck in that department (and the aren't even
Turing complete... Bah! ;)

[snipped about extra SVG features]
> As I said above, this should be possible. Realistically, this will also
> mean that some features are not supported by a specific backend,
> although they are supported by the output format, just because nobody
> has written the code. ;-)

Of course. After all, SVG has *lots* of features :)

> > Anyway, PyX r teh pwnz0r! ;)
>=20
> I'll bite. What does it mean?

Heh. Just an attempt at l33t sp33k. "r teh" as in "are the" as in "is
the". "pwn" as in "own"; "pwnz0r" as in "ownzor" as in "owner" as in
"the coolest" (or something; as in "i pwn u" or "I own you" from
online gaming and the like).

IOW, PyX rulez -- it's kewl :)

Seriously, I think it's a serious contender as one of the de facto
standard graphics packages for Python. I've been using ReportLab a bit
(it is in some areas sort of similar to Piddle/Sping, and, I think,
inspired by them) but the support for typography (through TeX and the
like) is, of course, completely missing. And PyX is just so much
cooler in many other ways too, so... ;)

Oh, enough, already... I've got to get out into the sun while I still
have some holiday left.

>         J=F6rg

--=20
Magnus Lie Hetland     "Canned Bread: The greatest thing since sliced
http://hetland.org      bread!" [from a can in Spongebob Squarepants]