On Thursday 13 July 2006 10:32, Martin Manns wrote: > > The bigger problem is that each file format has basic characteristics > > and limitations. If you draw a million markers and line segments, you > > are inevitably going to have a big postscript file, unless the > > postscript backend somehow detects the fact that almost all of your > > points are indistinguishable and therefore deletes most of them--and > > this is really asking too much of a plotting backend, I think. (An > > alternative is to generate a pixel image and make the postscript from > > that; this is what matlab does under some circumstances, but it can > > result in big files of poor quality.) > > The problems with crashing applications do not occur, if only dots are > printed. Furthermore, only if line lengths shrink to infinitesimal values, > ghostscript keeps processing them with a CPU load of 100% and Gigabytes of > RAM consumption. Even if this may be a ghostscript bug, I think that > a postscript backend for scientific plotting should look for lines that > have a length of less than epsilon (what might be 1/1e6 inch or > something) and exclude them from the eps.
I spent quite a bit of effort streamlining eps file creation. Adding a step to compare each point with the last one written will add a lot of overhead in order to deal with a relatively rare case such as yours. There are lots of users who want mpl to run as fast as possible, so please try to understand that there has to be some tradeoffs. > > Finally, we dont include tiff previews in our eps files, so this is not a > > bug. > > At least for me, including a tiff preview would really be beneficial. > I did not want to call this behavior a bug, but please consider such an > option. I dont think we can consider this until we bring the file size down by improving the font handling. But you can submit a feature request at the sourceforge site, although a patch would be preferred. > > Your options include: filter your points beforehand so you only plot > > points that are distinct; or use a pixel-based format like png, which > > keeps the file size under control. > > Unfortunately, this much easier in the proof of error that I sent > you than in my actual problem, since I then have to create a copy > of the data just for plotting. Just so for the postscript backend. Darren ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Matplotlib-users mailing list Matplotlib-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-users
