There's a convention to name packages plurally – i.e. TextPlots rather than TextPlot. This is nice partly because using TextPlots reads more naturally than using TextPlot, but more importantly because if you, as is likely, end up having a type called TextPlot, then you don't get a name collision.
On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 10:56 AM, Mike Innes <[email protected]> wrote: > 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. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>> >
