Incidentally, interop with other packages without a hard dependency is something that's around the corner, so you will be able to do this soon.
On 23 May 2014 15:32, Adam Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks all for the feedback! I have renamed it to TextPlot.jl, added > support for plotting just about any combination of > functions/vectors/matrix, made the API more flexible for Gadfly > compatibility, and greatly expanded the documentation/examples. It is now > quite a bit more powerful than ASCIIPlots: > https://github.com/sunetos/TextPlot.jl > > Ivar: I like the idea of having this be a backend for one of the other > plotting packages, but the dependency would need to be the other direction. > Meaning, they would need to add support for TextPlot, not the other way > around. Right now TextPlot has zero dependencies, so you can use it in > basically any environment, including a console-only server connected over > SSH. Installing Gadfly requires quite a few dependencies on other packages, > including Cairo and other graphical packages if you want PNG charts (for > iTerm2+IPython inline charts, a similar use case to this one). TextPlot > would be quite useful for machines that cannot build all those other > packages, so I don't want to make TextPlot depend on any of those packages. > > I think TextPlot is pretty capable already; please let me know if you can > think of anything it's missing! > > > On Friday, May 23, 2014 5:24:50 AM UTC-4, Ivar Nesje wrote: >> >> Yes, that was definitely my intention to suggest. It looks to me like >> ASCIIPlots.jl and DotPlot.jl solves the same problem in a very similar way, >> and whether to use Unicode for higher resolution seems like something I >> would expect to be an option. >> >> Anyway, the ultimate goal for ASCII art plots, would be to implement it >> as a backend for one of the normal plotting packages. >> >> Ivar >> >> kl. 10:06:42 UTC+2 fredag 23. mai 2014 skrev Tobias Knopp følgende: >>> >>> I think "merge" was meant as: Lets create one uniform package and join >>> the efforts. Since ASCIIPlots is not actively maintained I think it would >>> be really great if you could take the lead to make an awsome text plotting >>> tool. >>> >>> I like the name TextPlot by the way. >>> >>> Am Donnerstag, 22. Mai 2014 17:42:06 UTC+2 schrieb Adam Smith: >>>> >>>> TextPlot seems like a good name. >>>> >>>> Thanks for the offer on merging, but again, there's really nothing to >>>> merge. Adding scatterplots to dotplot will be trivial; I'll do that soon >>>> (making dotplot's features a superset of ASCIIPlots). There is nothing >>>> compatible/overlapping between these two (small) codebases for merging to >>>> make sense. >>>> >>>> I would be curious what John Myles White thinks about a more complete >>>> terminal plotting package for Julia. ASCIIPlots clearly imitates Matlab's >>>> plotting functions ("imagesc"), and I was going for something closer to >>>> Mathematica or Maple (which are more symbolic-oriented than Matlab), since >>>> I think the syntax is prettier. However, I know a large portion of Julia's >>>> users are also Matlab users, so if Matlab-compatibility is a goal, you may >>>> want to keep the packages separate. >>>> >>>> On Thursday, May 22, 2014 11:25:01 AM UTC-4, Leah Hanson wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Maybe something like TextPlot would be a good merged name? It conveys >>>>> what the package does (text plots) rather than how it does it (Braille >>>>> characters). >>>>> >>>>> Having a more complete plotting package for the terminal would move >>>>> towards having a way to make `plot` just work when you start up a Julia >>>>> REPL, which I think is a goal. I'd be happy to help merge them, but >>>>> probably won't have time for a couple weeks. >>>>> >>>>> -- Leah >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 7:49 AM, Adam Smith <[email protected]>wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> I'm not totally opposed to it, but my initial reaction is not to: >>>>>> >>>>>> 1. I don't necessarily agree about the name. I personally think >>>>>> "dot plot" has a nice ring to it, and it is a more accurate >>>>>> description of >>>>>> what it does (using Braille characters). This very specifically >>>>>> exploits >>>>>> Unicode (non-ASCII) characters, so calling it an ASCII plot would be >>>>>> misleading (for those who want the restricted character set for some >>>>>> reason). >>>>>> 2. There's not really a single line of code they have in common, >>>>>> so there's nothing to "merge": it would just be a rename. I didn't >>>>>> look at >>>>>> the code of ASCIIPlots before making it, and we chose completely >>>>>> different >>>>>> APIs. For example, ASCIIPlots doesn't have a way to plot functions, >>>>>> and >>>>>> DotPlot doesn't (yet) have a way to scatterplot an array. >>>>>> 3. They are both quite small and simple (dotplot is ~100 lines of >>>>>> code, ascii is ~250); merging would probably be more work than either >>>>>> originally took to create. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> On Thursday, May 22, 2014 1:31:10 AM UTC-4, Ivar Nesje wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Would it make sense to merge this functionality into ASCIIPlots? To >>>>>>> me that seems like a better name, and John Myles White is likely to be >>>>>>> willing to transfer the repository if you want to be the maintainer. >>>>>>> That >>>>>>> package started from code posted on the mailing list, and the author >>>>>>> thought it was a joke. John packaged it for others to use. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>
