On Dec 6, 2006, at 12:09 PM, Alan W. Irwin wrote: > Since Rafael is no longer working on anything PLplot-related, I > think the > best solution here is to implement the perl/pdl binding within the > PLplot > project. That actually should be pretty straightforward since you > could use > SWIG to build the perl/pdl interface following the work done for > our Python > and Java interfaces. The result would work on both Unix and > windows, and > would get rid of the painful split between the perl/pdl binding > done in an > external project and the perl/pdl examples done within PLplot. If any > perl/pdl expert here would like to volunteer to take this on, it > would be > great.
I think this is in fact pretty complicated. PDL is an extension of Perl that was designed primarily for number crunching and scientific computation. Most people who have Perl do not have PDL installed, and the binding in the relevant Perl module (PDL::Graphics::PLplot) are, as the name implies, dependent on PDL. This module is maintained by a member of the PDL project and is distributed by as a part of PDL. If one is interested it is not too hard to install. First you have to install PLplot, then you have install PDL (assuming that you have Perl). The PDL installation should find the PLplot library and everything should just work, i.e. you'll be able to run the PLplot Perl/PDL examples. It seems to me that the current situation is in fact pretty reasonable. Otherwise we have: (1) A pure Perl implementation of the PLplot bindings, which is somewhat redundant. (2) Maintaining our own parallel PDL interface as part of PLplot. This interface would be useless without PDL however and also hard to find since Perl users typically go to CPAN first. (3) Ask the maintainer about making the examples part of the Perl module. We'd lose the ability to keep the examples current, and the examples might get lost altogether since most Perl modules don't come with examples (or at least I haven't see many examples). -Hazen ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
