Re: [Visualpython-users] Re:How to print ?

[Bruce S. <ba...@an...>]

It sounds like DISLIN is ideal for sophisticated creation of graphs, and 
those who need this power should use it. It sounds like there is no 
particular reason for VPython to have any particular connection to DISLIN, 
or am I still missing something? (And I repeat, it does not seem to be 
available for Macintosh at all.)

--On Sunday, March 25, 2001 10:19 +0200 Ihor Rokach <ro...@tu...> 
wrote:

>      My point was to use DISLIN _instead_ of Visual to produce graphs.
> Visual is the best tool to produce 3D animations, etc. In my opinion,
> however, there are many other more suitable tools to produce 2D plots.
> Please, do not start to reinvent a wheel !  The last C-version of DISLIN
> consist of  565 functions. Are you going to make your 'plot making part'
> of Visual larger and more powerfull? Perhaps, it would be better to
> improve more 'native' Visual capabilities.

I think there are two different kinds of use. Sophisticated users need a 
sophisticated graphing package, and DISLIN may be it. My intro physics 
students need some very simple autoscaled graph capability of the kind 
offered by visual.graph. If I had known about DISLIN perhaps I could have 
gotten the simple capability I need by wrapping some DISLIN functions, 
though the unavailibility for Macintosh would have prevented going in this 
direction.

I have no desire to add features to visual.graph: it is what it is -- a 
very basic graphing routine. And I do not have the time nor currently the 
expertise to improve Visual itself, so my working on visual.graph did not 
take anything away from the evolution of Visual.

Perhaps you (or someone else) could contribute a replacement for 
visual.graph, based on DISLIN or whatever, and if it had the properties my 
students need I would definitely use it. Or if this is not feasible (or not 
available for Macintosh), then it would be nice to have a module that could 
produce Postscript starting from visual.graph. Someone familiar with 
Postscript could presumably create such a module quite quickly, whereas at 
the moment I'm trying to finish a physics textbook for publication this 
summer.

Bruce Sherwood