On 2011-04-16 11:44-0400 chm wrote:

> I'm starting to develop an OpenGL driver for
> PLplot

We would welcome such a driver, but there are some fundamental issues
with OpenGL to be aware of. I have no practical experience with OpenGL
myself, but my understanding from reading phoronix (e.g., see the
lead-in paragraph to
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTI1OA which
summarizes the Linux OpenGL situation in preparation for an article on
OpenCL) is that later versions of OpenGL are not supported by Linux.
(I have heard elsewhere that is because those later versions are under
patent threat.) So my advice would be to stick to the OpenGL 1 and 2
standards rather than using anything shiny and new from OpenGL 3 or 4.

> and would like to know the best way
> to participate as a PLplot developer for this
> contribution.  My current plan is as follows:
>
>   (1) get PLplot SVN to build on cygwin

Why Cygwin?  That is one of our least-tested platforms so you may run
into trouble there.  I hope to help out with Cygwin testing myself
(see below), but that wine idea might not work.

>
>   (2) get PLplot on cygwin to work with PDL
>       (I'll be working on #3 and #4 below in
>        parallel to this)

Why PDL?  The issues in that external project are being currently
worked on by Doug Hunt, but until he resolves those it is going to be
quite complicated (see examples/perl/README.perldemos) to even test
PDL.  I would stick to the C version of PLplot for your initial
experiments.  We have a whole host of C examples which "just work".
If you use the cmake option -DBUILD_TEST=ON, then

make test_c_psc

automatically builds all the C examples (and also runs them for -dev
psc).

After that, you can simply try your own experimental device instead, e.g., by
running

examples/c/x01c -dev opengl


>
>   (3) implement a non-interactive opengl driver
>       (kind of like the mem driver on steroids)
>
>   (4) add interactive support to the new driver
>
> I took a look at the wiki and it looks like
> you have a patches-only mode for developers.
> If so, at what time should I provide the new
> code patch?

We accept patches submitted to us under the LGPL license any time.  We
have a nice architecture so that driver code does not affect anything
else, and if there are problems with a particular immature driver's
code so it won't even build without issues, then we can disable it by
default.

We probably won't apply your patch immediately if we are in the last
distracted week before a release, but otherwise there are no timing
constraints.

>
> Also, I was wondering what the schedule was
> for the 5.9.8 release (I was thinking it might
> be possible for a preliminary opengl driver to
> be available for that if it is not immediately
> being release).

Our release process is informal.  Basically we release when ready and
finalize release dates typically a couple of weeks in advance. We are
not ready yet to set the date for the 5.9.8 release because there is
some open-ended work Hez and I are still doing on plcolorbar, some
open-ended work on the qt device driver that Hazen is doing, and I
also need some additional time to pursue my idea that it might be
possible to test PLplot on Cygwin under wine.

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).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________

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