On 2009-03-02 14:05-0600 Thomas Stover wrote:

> Alan W. Irwin wrote:
>> Specifically, build just the plplot C library (with libqhull and freetype
>> dropped to eliminate those dependencies and with no dynamic drivers to
>> eliminate the dependence on dynamic loading libraries) 
>
> What features go away by dropping qhull?

You have to use lower-quality fallbacks for interpolating between a "random"
bunch of points and a rectangular grid of points using plgriddata, see
src/plgridd.c.  The only standard example affected by this is example 21
since it is the only one that uses the plgriddata command.  However, even
then the fallbacks are acceptable.

For the record, dropping the direct dependency on freetype is potentially 
more serious since that means you are stuck with the Hershey font fallback
for many device drivers.  Those fonts give OK-looking results on printers,
but those fonts are unhinted and therefore they give bad-looking results on
displays. This issue does not affect cairo devices directly since they do
not rely on the plplot core library for font handling.  Instead, they rely
on the cairo stack of libraries to handle fonts.  That stack does include
freetype (and a whole lot more) so in practical terms once you have the
cairo device driver working for a cross build, then you should be able to
add the cross-build freetype dependence to the plplot core library without
any issues.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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