Yes! Nancy, great! Now I think I can describe my question simply. Take
the image generate by the script below... I'm looking at it right now.
See all of the connections and points which are necessary to describe the
"circles"? What I want to know is if the "connections", i.e. the linear
paths between points can be warped into curves. If so, then each of the
"circles" in this square doughnut could be described by 1 circular
"connection". Since my data is a constant inside of this doughnut, I
would prefer not having to make many, many copies of it in order to
display it in full rotated glory.
I'm afraid that the answer is no. From what I can tell, points map to
points in coordinate transformations, but lines remain "straight"
independent of the coordinate transformation. It seems to be a basic
assumption of the data model.
Please prove me wrong and show me that it can be done! :-)
I tried to do something silly and do the same mark, compute, unmark this
time operating on connections, but as I expected it did not work since (I
think this is the reason) connections are not a primative object in dx,
but instead are product arrays of path array objects (right?). Can a path
array object be warped so to speak?
Tom
On Thu, 22 Jun 2000, nancy collins wrote:
>as chris and ned observed, you may indeed want to do your
>analysis before bringing your data into dx, and we probably
>ought to take the rest of this discussion off-line, but as
>a parting shot, just for grins here's a square bagel picture.
>(cut the following text and run it with 'dx -script'). it probably
>doesn't have the correct axis of symmetry, but you get the idea.
>
>nancy
>
>
>grid = Construct([0,5], [0.35,1], [20,4]);
>
>pos = Mark(grid, "positions");
>comp = Compute("[$0.y * cos($0.x), $0.y * sin($0.x)]", pos);
>warp = Unmark(comp);
>
>ser = CollectSeries(warp, 0.0, warp, 4.0);
>threeD = Stack(ser);
>
>lines = ShowConnections(threeD);
>
>cam = AutoCamera(lines, "off-right");
>image = Render(lines, cam);
>
>Display(image);
>
>
>
>
