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 __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Benefiting from Server Virtualization: Beyond Initial Workload Consolidation -- Increasing the use of server virtualization is a top priority.Virtualization can reduce costs, simplify management, and improve application availability and disaster protection. Learn more about boosting the value of server virtualization. http://p.sf.net/sfu/vmware-sfdev2dev _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel