[matplotlib-devel] MEP14: Improve text handling
I've drafted a MEP with a plan to improve some of the text and font handling in matplotlib. I'd love any and all feedback. https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/wiki/Mep14 Mike -- Introducing AppDynamics Lite, a free troubleshooting tool for Java/.NET Get 100% visibility into your production application - at no cost. Code-level diagnostics for performance bottlenecks with <2% overhead Download for free and get started troubleshooting in minutes. http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_ap1___ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
Re: [matplotlib-devel] ANN: matplotlib-1.3.0rc1
On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 5:54 PM, Michael Droettboom wrote: > It looks like the ability to include pytz and other dependencies in > binary distributions has been removed? > > It's really just that the matplotlib source no longer includes them. > Binaries can be built however we want them to be. Not knowing how the .dmg > is put together, is it possible to add pytz, dateutil, pyparsing and six to > the dmg during its creation? I agree -- adding them to the binary package is the way to go here -- it's packaging issue, not a development or building issue. I can't imagine it would be hard to write a little script that includes them all in one mpkg. > Right -- and we're not using pip (because we can't) to handle our C/C++ > dependencies, many of which we continue to ship with matplotlib. Should the code that's shipped with MPL be build-able with PIP? But the harder issue is third-party dependencies that we expect the system to provide: libpng, libfreetype, On the building side, I'd really like to see more support for this -- the Linux package managers handle it OK on LInux, but there is no good system for Windows or OS-X. I'm taking a look at gattai: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gattai/ Mostly for the Mac, but it does support Windows and linux as well. I'm not looking at Windows right now, as Christoph's repository gives me all I need -- which makes me think: Christoph, do you have a build system for all those that might be a good basis for a multi-platform solution? -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R(206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception chris.bar...@noaa.gov -- Introducing AppDynamics Lite, a free troubleshooting tool for Java/.NET Get 100% visibility into your production application - at no cost. Code-level diagnostics for performance bottlenecks with <2% overhead Download for free and get started troubleshooting in minutes. http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_ap1 ___ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
Re: [matplotlib-devel] MEP14: Improve text handling
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Michael Droettboom wrote: > I've drafted a MEP with a plan to improve some of the text and font handling > in matplotlib. > > I'd love any and all feedback. nice writ-up and thanks for workign on this. One idea (alternative?) would be to put more effort into the "mathtext" renderer. TeX itself, of course does an outstanding job of laying out text, paragraphs, etc. I'm assuming that the core stuff is already in mathtext, so adding better support for regular old non-math text would be a less-than-huge deal. And we still wouldn't need the full how-to-split-pages and all that code for MPL. Not sure about properly handling unicode issues, though modern TeX does support unicode. With a fully-function mathtex, it could be the default (only?) text layout system for MPL, simplifying things quite a bit. ... just a thought. -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R(206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception chris.bar...@noaa.gov -- Introducing AppDynamics Lite, a free troubleshooting tool for Java/.NET Get 100% visibility into your production application - at no cost. Code-level diagnostics for performance bottlenecks with <2% overhead Download for free and get started troubleshooting in minutes. http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_ap1 ___ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
Re: [matplotlib-devel] MEP14: Improve text handling
For the free type wrapper, maybe the freetype-py may be of some help: http://code.google.com/p/freetype-py/ I did not wrap all the freetype library but it already allows a fair amount of font manipulation/rendering. For unicode/harfbuzz, I've found this example https://github.com/lxnt/ex-sdl-freetype-harfbuzz to be incredibly useful to understand the (poorly documented) library. The strong point of harfbuzz is to have no heavy dependencies (compared to pango for example). By the way, Behad is considering a refactoring of the library and it might be worth to interact with him (on the harfbuzz list) to see how this could ease a python wrapper (if you intend to use it of course). In the current draft, you're speaking of rich text but I found no reference for a possible markup (or equivalent) to specify the different font, color, boldness, etc. Nicolas On May 30, 2013, at 8:27 PM, Chris Barker - NOAA Federal wrote: > On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Michael Droettboom wrote: >> I've drafted a MEP with a plan to improve some of the text and font handling >> in matplotlib. >> >> I'd love any and all feedback. > > nice writ-up and thanks for workign on this. > > One idea (alternative?) would be to put more effort into the > "mathtext" renderer. TeX itself, of course does an outstanding job of > laying out text, paragraphs, etc. I'm assuming that the core stuff is > already in mathtext, so adding better support for regular old non-math > text would be a less-than-huge deal. And we still wouldn't need the > full how-to-split-pages and all that code for MPL. > > Not sure about properly handling unicode issues, though modern TeX > does support unicode. > > With a fully-function mathtex, it could be the default (only?) text > layout system for MPL, simplifying things quite a bit. > > ... just a thought. > > -Chris > > > > -- > > Christopher Barker, Ph.D. > Oceanographer > > Emergency Response Division > NOAA/NOS/OR&R(206) 526-6959 voice > 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax > Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception > > chris.bar...@noaa.gov > > -- > Introducing AppDynamics Lite, a free troubleshooting tool for Java/.NET > Get 100% visibility into your production application - at no cost. > Code-level diagnostics for performance bottlenecks with <2% overhead > Download for free and get started troubleshooting in minutes. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_ap1 > ___ > Matplotlib-devel mailing list > Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel -- Introducing AppDynamics Lite, a free troubleshooting tool for Java/.NET Get 100% visibility into your production application - at no cost. Code-level diagnostics for performance bottlenecks with <2% overhead Download for free and get started troubleshooting in minutes. http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_ap1 ___ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
[matplotlib-devel] Mac binary for 1.3.0rc2; more errors than usual in the unit tests
I uploaded a binary installer for MacOS X, 64-bit python.org python 2.7.
I built it using numpy 1.7.1. This version does not include pytz,
dateutil or six, but the included ReadMe says they are prerequisites and
suggests installing them with pip.
The tests showed more problems than usual. I have appended the whole set.
A few questions:
- Why does setupext.py's dateutil finder have this:
return ['python_dateutil']
when the package is called python-dateutil (hyphen instead of
underscore)? If it is intentional, it might be worth noting with a
comment.
- Why include licenses for pytz and dateutil?
-- Russell
Here is the test log:
localhost$ python -c "import matplotlib as m ; m.test(verbosity=1)"
.
.
.
..kpathsea: Invalid fontname `Bitstream Vera Serif', contains ' '
Ekpathsea: Invalid fontname `Bitstream Vera Serif', contains ' '
EK.K.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
./Library/Frameworks/Python.framework
/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/ma/core.py:777:
RuntimeWarning: invalid value encountered in absolute
return umath.absolute(a) * self.tolerance >= umath.absolute(b)
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-pack
ages/numpy/ma/core.py:3791: UserWarning: Warning: converting a masked
element to nan.
warnings.warn("Warning: converting a masked element to nan.")
.../Library/Frameworks/Python.fra
mework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/gridspec.py:29
8: UserWarning: This figure includes Axes that are not compatible with
tight_layout, so its results might be incorrect.
warnings.warn("This figure includes Axes that are not "
/Library/Frameworks/Python.fr
amework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/testing/utils.py:8
07: RuntimeWarning: invalid value encountered in absolute
z = abs(x-y)
E
==
ERROR: matplotlib.tests.test_backend_pgf.test_pathclip
--
Traceback (most recent call last):
File
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-pac
kages/nose/case.py", line 197, in runTest
self.test(*self.arg)
File
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-pac
kages/matplotlib/tests/test_backend_pgf.py", line 45, in backend_switcher
result = func(*args, **kwargs)
File
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-pac
kages/matplotlib/tests/test_backend_pgf.py", line 145, in test_pathclip
plt.savefig(os.path.join(result_dir, "pgf_pathclip.pdf"))
File
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-pac
kages/matplotlib/pyplot.py", line 561, in savefig
return fig.savefig(*args, **kwargs)
File
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-pac
kages/matplotlib/figure.py", line 1410, in savefig
self.canvas.print_figure(*args, **kwargs)
File
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-pac
kages/matplotlib/backend_bases.py", line 2220, in print_figure
**kwargs)
File
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-pac
kages/matplotlib/backends/backend_pgf.py", line 864, in print_pdf
self._print_pdf_to_fh(fh, *args, **kwargs)
File
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-pac
kages/matplotlib/backends/backend_pgf.py", line 822, in _print_pdf_to_fh
self.print_pgf(fname_pgf, *args, **kwargs)
File
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-
Re: [matplotlib-devel] MEP14: Improve text handling
On 05/30/2013 02:27 PM, Chris Barker - NOAA Federal wrote: > On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Michael Droettboom wrote: >> I've drafted a MEP with a plan to improve some of the text and font handling >> in matplotlib. >> >> I'd love any and all feedback. > nice writ-up and thanks for workign on this. > > One idea (alternative?) would be to put more effort into the > "mathtext" renderer. TeX itself, of course does an outstanding job of > laying out text, paragraphs, etc. I'm assuming that the core stuff is > already in mathtext, so adding better support for regular old non-math > text would be a less-than-huge deal. And we still wouldn't need the > full how-to-split-pages and all that code for MPL. That's an interesting idea, that we should definitely ruminate on. That still doesn't address the Unicode issues, which are really complex to get right -- I'd really rather depend on something else for that. But what you suggest might be the best way forward to improve the built-in rendering for a good fraction of users that don't really care about Unicode. > > Not sure about properly handling unicode issues, though modern TeX > does support unicode. Right -- and I think moving to XeTeX for the "usetex" backend, which is now pretty widely available, might be a good improvement on that front. I still don't want to reimplement all of that, if I can avoid it. > > With a fully-function mathtex, it could be the default (only?) text > layout system for MPL, simplifying things quite a bit. I'm not sure that's realistic. The usetex backend gets a great deal of use, and I don't think it's only because it handles multiline text better -- it's also the easiest way to make the text match that of a larger TeX document in which it's included (though the new PGF backend goes some way to helping that in an entirely different way). It might be worth collating a list of reasons that users are using "usetex" to include in the MEP -- if we can address them all in another way, great, but if not it's not too difficult to keep something that already works fairly well working. The problem I have with it is not really that it exists, only that it has tendrils all throughout matplotlib that could be better localized into a single set of modules. > > ... just a thought. > > Thanks. Keep em coming! Mike -- Get 100% visibility into Java/.NET code with AppDynamics Lite It's a free troubleshooting tool designed for production Get down to code-level detail for bottlenecks, with <2% overhead. Download for free and get started troubleshooting in minutes. http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_ap2 ___ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
Re: [matplotlib-devel] MEP14: Improve text handling
On 05/30/2013 03:33 PM, Nicolas Rougier wrote: > > For the free type wrapper, maybe the freetype-py may be of some help: > http://code.google.com/p/freetype-py/ > > I did not wrap all the freetype library but it already allows a fair amount > of font manipulation/rendering. I looked at this a number of years ago, and just looked at it again today. I think in general it's a better approach than what we have now in matplotlib, in that it's a thin wrapper around freetype rather than a "just enough to for what we need approach", which should make things more flexible in the long run. It's a lot like what I have in mind. However, I do have some concerns about it and I'd like to get a sense of your receptibility to these changes. 1) It's implemented in ctypes. I'm not much of a fan of ctypes, as it has the potential to segfault in nasty ways if the API changes in any way from what was expected (which would normally be caught at compile time in a C extension). I'm also concerned about the overhead of ctypes, given that there are already so many required optimizations in the matplotlib freetype wrapper to make it fast enough. But I'm willing to hold judgement on that until some measurements have been made. 2) It's not Numpy-aware. For example, it loads image buffers into regular Python lists. This really should use Numpy for speed. 3) It exposes the fixed point numbers to Python as integers -- it should really return all of these as floats -- the user shouldn't have to know or remember which values are 16.16 and which are 24.8 etc. It should just give floats. Double precision (with 52 bits in the mantissa) is enough for any of these 32-bit fixed-point values. I think that's just a remnant of older systems and needing to run on hardware without an FPU that doesn't need to be brought forward into the Python wrapper. 4) It should have another layer to handle the decoding of SFNT tables in a consistent manner. I know the sfnt-names.py example does this, but that should be built into the library. There are certain places where hiding the details of the underlying font file is a good thing -- and I think one of the reasons freetype doesn't do this is the lack of a standard Unicode type in C. We don't have that problem in Python. I think all of these are fixable by adding another layer on top, with the exception of (1) of course. Maybe it makes sense to build that intermediate layer, adapt matplotlib to it, benchmark the ctypes issue, and if necessary reimplement the core using C/API. > > > For unicode/harfbuzz, I've found this example > > https://github.com/lxnt/ex-sdl-freetype-harfbuzz > > to be incredibly useful to understand the (poorly documented) library. The > strong point of harfbuzz is to have no heavy dependencies (compared to pango > for example). By the way, Behad is considering a refactoring of the library > and it might be worth to interact with him (on the harfbuzz list) to see how > this could ease a python wrapper (if you intend to use it of course). That example is very helpful. Thanks. I should add to the MEP, for those that are not aware, that even though Harfbuzz is a part of the Gtk/Gnome/Cairo ecosystem, it is a very standalone library itself, and is the closest to "works everywhere with minimal requirements" of any of the available options. I should definitely clarify that even though there are many options for font layout libraries, including both cross-platform/open source and closed-source-vendor ones, Harfbuzz could be the "one to rule them all" so we wouldn't necessarily need to wrap all of them. > > > In the current draft, you're speaking of rich text but I found no reference > for a possible markup (or equivalent) to specify the different font, color, > boldness, etc. Yeah -- I need to make that more explicit. I think MEP14 needs to consider the *possibility* of adding rich text support down the line so that the API can support it, but the details of how we might actually do that should be postponed for another MEP. It's already a lot to bite off as it is. Does that make sense to you -- are there things in the proposed API that would inhibit that from being added in the future? Cheers, Mike > > > > Nicolas > > > > On May 30, 2013, at 8:27 PM, Chris Barker - NOAA Federal > wrote: > >> On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Michael Droettboom wrote: >>> I've drafted a MEP with a plan to improve some of the text and font handling >>> in matplotlib. >>> >>> I'd love any and all feedback. >> nice writ-up and thanks for workign on this. >> >> One idea (alternative?) would be to put more effort into the >> "mathtext" renderer. TeX itself, of course does an outstanding job of >> laying out text, paragraphs, etc. I'm assuming that the core stuff is >> already in mathtext, so adding better support for regular old non-math >> text would be a less-than-huge deal. And we still wouldn't need the >> full how-to-split-pages and all
Re: [matplotlib-devel] Mac binary for 1.3.0rc2; more errors than usual in the unit tests
On 05/30/2013 06:06 PM, Russell E. Owen wrote:
I uploaded a binary installer for MacOS X, 64-bit python.org python 2.7.
I built it using numpy 1.7.1. This version does not include pytz,
dateutil or six, but the included ReadMe says they are prerequisites and
suggests installing them with pip.
The tests showed more problems than usual. I have appended the whole set.
A few questions:
- Why does setupext.py's dateutil finder have this:
return ['python_dateutil']
when the package is called python-dateutil (hyphen instead of
underscore)? If it is intentional, it might be worth noting with a
comment.
Thanks for noticing that. You are correct, and that underscore should
be replaced with a hyphen. However, I think in practice it's making no
difference. distribute automatically replaces underscores with hyphens
before it does the PyPI lookup. In any event, I've fixed this in e2e89eb.
- Why include licenses for pytz and dateutil?
I just forgot to remove those during the refactor. They have been
removed in 441fe10.
As for the tests: The warnings are all normal (it would be great to
hide them, but I haven't invested much time to investigate that).
The first two failures are related to the PGF backend, and I suspect are
failing because of a missing package in your LaTeX installation. I've
created issue #2097 and Cc'd you and Peter Wurtz (the PGF backend
author) who may have some insight.
The last failure is a puzzler -- for some reason, the
test_coding_standards test module isn't importing, though it was found.
I'll let you know if there's more information I need from you about
that, but at this point I'm not even sure how to investigate that one.
Thanks for working on this,
Mike
-- Russell
Here is the test log:
localhost$ python -c "import matplotlib as m ; m.test(verbosity=1)"
.
.
.
..kpathsea: Invalid fontname `Bitstream Vera Serif', contains ' '
Ekpathsea: Invalid fontname `Bitstream Vera Serif', contains ' '
EK.K.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
./Library/Frameworks/Python.framework
/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/ma/core.py:777:
RuntimeWarning: invalid value encountered in absolute
return umath.absolute(a) * self.tolerance >= umath.absolute(b)
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-pack
ages/numpy/ma/core.py:3791: UserWarning: Warning: converting a masked
element to nan.
warnings.warn("Warning: converting a masked element to nan.")
.../Library/Frameworks/Python.fra
mework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/matplotlib/gridspec.py:29
8: UserWarning: This figure includes Axes that are not compatible with
tight_layout, so its results might be incorrect.
warnings.warn("This figure includes Axes that are not "
/Library/Frameworks/Python.fr
amework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/testing/utils.py:8
07: RuntimeWarning: invalid value encountered in absolute
z = abs(x-y)
E
==
ERROR: matplotlib.tests.test_backend_pgf.test_pathclip
--
Traceback (most recent call last):
File
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-pac
kages/nose/case.py", line 197, in runTest
self.test(*self.arg)
File
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-pac
kages/matplotlib/tests/test_backend_pgf.py", line 45, in backend_switcher
result = func(*args, **kwargs)
File
"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/pytho
Re: [matplotlib-devel] MEP14: Improve text handling
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 5:03 PM, Michael Droettboom wrote:
> On 05/30/2013 02:27 PM, Chris Barker - NOAA Federal wrote:
> >
> > With a fully-function mathtex, it could be the default (only?) text
> > layout system for MPL, simplifying things quite a bit.
>
> I'm not sure that's realistic. The usetex backend gets a great deal of
> use, and I don't think it's only because it handles multiline text
> better -- it's also the easiest way to make the text match that of a
> larger TeX document in which it's included (though the new PGF backend
> goes some way to helping that in an entirely different way).
Exactly! I like that I can set text.usetex=True and add
\usepackage{fourier} and I *know* that my figures and document will look
the same.
That said, I've never been able to get the PGF backend to work well. Random
elements are pixelated. It's surely user-error on my end, but the usetex is
comparatively easy to set up.
> It might
> be worth collating a list of reasons that users are using "usetex" to
> include in the MEP -- if we can address them all in another way, great,
> but if not it's not too difficult to keep something that already works
> fairly well working. The problem I have with it is not really that it
> exists, only that it has tendrils all throughout matplotlib that could
> be better localized into a single set of modules.
>
As I state above -- I absolutely require One Font throughout my documents.
If it's a serif font, I use the fourier TeX package. If it's a sans-serif
font, I do the weird \sansmath voodoo (I still owe you a PR with an example
of setting that up). Point is, it works well.
Cheers,
-paul
--
Get 100% visibility into Java/.NET code with AppDynamics Lite
It's a free troubleshooting tool designed for production
Get down to code-level detail for bottlenecks, with <2% overhead.
Download for free and get started troubleshooting in minutes.
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Matplotlib-devel mailing list
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Re: [matplotlib-devel] MEP14: Improve text handling
On 05/30/2013 08:21 PM, Michael Droettboom wrote: > 1) It's implemented in ctypes. I'm not much of a fan of ctypes, as it > has the potential to segfault in nasty ways if the API changes in any > way from what was expected (which would normally be caught at compile > time in a C extension). I'm also concerned about the overhead of > ctypes, given that there are already so many required optimizations in > the matplotlib freetype wrapper to make it fast enough. But I'm > willing to hold judgement on that until some measurements have been > made. 2) It's not Numpy-aware. For example, it loads image buffers > into regular Python lists. This really should use Numpy for speed. 3) > It exposes the fixed point numbers to Python as integers -- it should > really return all of these as floats -- the user shouldn't have to > know or remember which values are 16.16 and which are 24.8 etc. It > should just give floats. Double precision (with 52 bits in the > mantissa) is enough for any of these 32-bit fixed-point values. I > think that's just a remnant of older systems and needing to run on > hardware without an FPU that doesn't need to be brought forward into > the Python wrapper. 4) It should have another layer to handle the > decoding of SFNT tables in a consistent manner. I know the > sfnt-names.py example does this, but that should be built into the > library. There are certain places where hiding the details of the > underlying font file is a good thing -- and I think one of the reasons > freetype doesn't do this is the lack of a standard Unicode type in C. > We don't have that problem in Python. I think all of these are fixable > by adding another layer on top, with the exception of (1) of course. > Maybe it makes sense to build that intermediate layer, adapt > matplotlib to it, benchmark the ctypes issue, and if necessary > reimplement the core using C/API. Additionally, I just discovered that ctypes isn't available on Google App Engine, for obvious security reasons. That sort of, unfortunately, makes it a non-starter for matplotlib. Wish that weren't the case, but I think Google App Engine support is an important thing to keep going... Mike -- Get 100% visibility into Java/.NET code with AppDynamics Lite It's a free troubleshooting tool designed for production Get down to code-level detail for bottlenecks, with <2% overhead. Download for free and get started troubleshooting in minutes. http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_ap2 ___ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
Re: [matplotlib-devel] MEP14: Improve text handling
> 1) It's implemented in ctypes. I'm not much of a fan of ctypes, as it > has the potential to segfault in nasty ways if the API changes in any > way from what was expected (which would normally be caught at compile > time in a C extension). I'm also concerned about the overhead of > ctypes, given that there are already so many required optimizations in > the matplotlib freetype wrapper to make it fast enough. But I'm willing > to hold judgement on that until some measurements have been made. > I would never have thought ctypes would be a problem for speed/optimization and I never benchmarked the freetype-py. Not sure how to do that though. > 2) It's not Numpy-aware. For example, it loads image buffers into > regular Python lists. This really should use Numpy for speed. Yes, and I recently discovered it may make things really slow in some cases. > 3) It exposes the fixed point numbers to Python as integers -- it should > really return all of these as floats -- the user shouldn't have to know > or remember which values are 16.16 and which are 24.8 etc. It should > just give floats. Double precision (with 52 bits in the mantissa) is > enough for any of these 32-bit fixed-point values. I think that's just a > remnant of older systems and needing to run on hardware without an FPU > that doesn't need to be brought forward into the Python wrapper. You're right. I try to keep the very-low level to stick to the freetype implementation/type and the mid-level wrapper should use float everywhere (I may need to check that). This + your comment on Google App Engine makes me think that freetype-py might not be so useful in the end. Anyway, I would gladly (try to) contribute to the new system. Nicolas -- Get 100% visibility into Java/.NET code with AppDynamics Lite It's a free troubleshooting tool designed for production Get down to code-level detail for bottlenecks, with <2% overhead. Download for free and get started troubleshooting in minutes. http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_ap2 ___ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
