Hi Michael! Thanks a lot for a thourough reply. I've CCed Saroj, the GSoC applicant. I hope he'll succeed.
If you could mentor, that'd be great. Do you want to mentor officially or unofficially? If officially, you need to be a PSF mentor (let me know, I'll help you do the administration). If unofficially, I can be the mentor and you can help Saroj with the TeX part of his app. Actually, if it's not a problem for you, I'd prefer the official way, for example you can be a backup mentor. Also you'll get a google GSoC t-shirt. :) Ondrej On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 2:22 PM, Michael Droettboom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Well, that work has gone from a "paid to work on it" to a "hobby > project", so it's harder to find the time. > > In terms of "math rendering" features, it's pretty complete. It's not > 100% of TeX, and it never will be, but it's able to do most of the > really common things. > > I would like to see this as an independent Python package. The pieces > that are missing to do this are: > > Freetype wrappers: One could just extract the existing freetype wrappers > in mpl. But that duplicates that code in two places, and those wrappers > were built on a sort of "as needed" basis, and wouldn't be considered > complete for any other purpose. (Maybe not a bad thing, though). The > ctypes-based wrapper in pyglet is a candidate, but last time I looked, > it's missing some features to extract the glyph metadata that mathtext > needs. Plus, there always seem to be version mismatch problems with > ctypes-based stuff, at least for me. I'd still love to see a proper C > freetype wrapper as an independent project. PIL has a very basic one, > that doesn't even come close to what we need -- but perhaps it's a > starting point that could be extended. > > A basic bitmap rendering engine: It needs to be able to take the glyph > buffers from freetype and blend them onto an image, as well as draw > filled rectangles. So it doesn't need to be anything as full-blown as > Agg, and could probably be built on top of numpy or PIL, or as a C > extension, but pure Python ain't gonna cut it. This should then > integrate with PILand/or pyglet to save PNG, JPEG files etc. > > Non-bitmap backends: These would be subsets of the matplotlib backends, > but we would probably want the basic ability to write out PS, PDF and > SVG etc. This is probably the biggest part of matplotlib that would > need to be "pulled out", and the trickiest. It would still be useful to > just have the "generic" vector description of the equations from > mathtext and consider these backends as a secondary feature for later. > An HTML backend that does glyph placement with CSS and Canvas would > probably also be very useful for webpage output. > > So, that's a lot of work there, but it's all doable and should be fairly > unsurprising. I'd be happy to unofficially help mentor someone doing a > GSoC project on this, but I don't think I'll have time to do all of the > work myself in the near future. > > Cheers, > Mike > > > > Ondrej Certik wrote: > > Hi, > > > > was there any new progress for the TeX engine since our last conversation? > > > > We got a GSoC application for SymPy, that (among other things) would > > try to disentangle the TeX engine from matplotlib, so that it can be > > easily used from other projects as well. > > > > What are your intentions with the engine - do you still hack on it, or > > do you consider it more or less complete for your needs? I don't want > > to have 2 incompatible engines in python - but if you are not going to > > hack on it (much), then I think it makes sense to create a new project > > for this and you can just include it. Because I think it's an > > extremely cool and useful thing. > > > > And we want to have this in sympy too, because we have quite nice > > ascii art printing, so having nice graphics printing is just a next > > step. > > > > Ondrej > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. > > It's the best place to buy or sell services for > > just about anything Open Source. > > > http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;164216239;13503038;w?http://sf.net/marketplace > > _______________________________________________ > > Matplotlib-devel mailing list > > Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel > > > > -- > Michael Droettboom > Science Software Branch > Operations and Engineering Division > Space Telescope Science Institute > Operated by AURA for NASA > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;164216239;13503038;w?http://sf.net/marketplace _______________________________________________ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
