Re: [boost] Any interest in a chart library

From: Cory Nelson (phrosty_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-09-06 03:23:29

On 9/6/05, Bjørn Roald <bjorn_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Jeff Garland wrote:
> 
> > I think there would be interest
> 
> agree
> 
> > and I believe there are solutions to the
> > problems you raise.  For example, you could integrate the chart lib so
> > that it
> > could use several different graphics packages that would be external to
> > boost
> 
> In general I do agree, however it should be recognized that there is a
> certain
> potential for a primitive graphics library in Boost.  It would be better if
> the
> higher level library proposed by the OP could be based on such a standard
> grapichs API.
> 
> > (iostreams, for example, can use various compression libs for compressing
> > data).
> 
> Compresion library APIs are probably very different from graphic libraries
> with
> regard to the size of the API.  A good example of the opposite approach is
> Boost.Threads.
> 
> I strongly believe projects like the one proposed here will be a lot more
> attractive to write and maintain if we had a good and portable graphics
> library under Boost or the C++ standard.  Alternatively an existing portable
> library could be used, but this add dependencies to other libraries that
> typically
> are not part of the target platforms and there are most likely issues with
> licences
> to most of these.
> 
> The need for graphics primitive API was discussed as one of the first issues
> that had to be addressed when proposal for GUI library was discussed earlier
> on this list.  Is there any work ongoing on this?  It seems like this has
> stalled,
> I think this is a sign that the task of writing higher level graphics based
> libraries
> becomes overvelming in Boost since a single source of portable graphics
> foundation is not available.  We have many good alternatives, but none of
> these
> meet all requirements as I see it, so the best we have is to advice
> developers to
> integrate to more than one graphics package.  Not good for Boost nor for C++
> in general.
> 
> One thing C++ really need is something that is standard, is available and is
> free
> which in spirit provides for Standard C++ what Java2D and possibly
> Java3D provides for Java.  A good source of inspiration is
>  http://doc.trolltech.com/4.0/qt4-arthur.html .
> 
> I would consider to help out with such an effort if somebody else took the
> lead,
> but I have limited time I can set aside for such work.

Have you looked into AGG (http://www.antigrain.com)?  It avoids use of
the STL yes, but it's the highest quality graphics lib I've seen, and
its license is less restrictive than the zlib/libpng license so there
is no reason it couldn't be forked.

> ----
> Bjørn Roald
> 
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-- 
Cory Nelson
http://www.int64.org