GSoC project: new graphics backend

[Ben Abbott]

On Mar 26, 2009, at 11:52 PM, Shai Ayal wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 4:25 AM, Jonathan Stickel  
> <jjstickel at vcn.com> wrote:
>
>> Plotting in Octave is pathetic, in my opinion.  Among other things,  
>> 2D
>> plotting should provide complete control over the style of data  
>> points and
>> lines.  Mouse control for things like zooming would be nice.   
>> Octave has
>> experienced some regression here.  3D plotting should look great,  
>> provide
>> text, and have mouse controls. Octave plotting is OK for quick  
>> plots to see
>> what my data looks like, but I've come to realize recently that to  
>> get
>> publication quality plots, I must resort to saving my data and  
>> plotting in a
>> 3rd party program (gnuplot, matplotlib, mayavi, etc).
>
> I must disagree with you on this point. I agree that plotting WAS good
> only for quick plots I think that since moving to having core graphics
> in octave, I can produce production quality 2D plots using
> octave+gnuplot.
>
> We now (at least from version 3.0.3) have full control over line
> widths & fonts, and mouse zooming. The only thing I was missing for my
> last "publication quality" plot was control over ticklabel fonts. I
> think that with some more effort the fltk backend will be up to speed
> and provide even those.
>
> As for VTK, from the examples on their page, I do not consider their
> graphics "publication quality", and we are building on established
> systems by using OpenGL which does most of the 3D work for us
>
> Shai

The developers sources includes the capability of changing the  
ticklabel fonts.

	set (gca, "fontname", "Times-Roman")

Ben