dflplot/Plot2Kill, Most Mature *nix GUI For D2

dsimcha dsimcha at yahoo.com
Thu Jul 15 19:41:01 PDT 2010


I've refactored my dflplot lib to the point where the GUI-specific stuff is
well abstracted from the GUI-agnostic stuff in preparation for a port to a GUI
lib that supports rotated fonts, saving bitmaps, and/or *nix.  The plan is to
support multiple GUI libs, including DFL (already working except for rotated
fonts and saving) and at least one or two more.

I started trying to do a port to gtkD, but found the API to be intolerable in
that it's poorly documented and requires you to use the low-level C APIs
(read:  raw pointers and
functions_named_like_this_to_prevent_naming_collisions()) for basic stuff like
constructing a drawing context.  It might be a good choice when it matures,
the docs improve and the C cruft is wrapped better, but in the short run I
don't think a gtkD port is happening.

OTOH, I realize that much, possibly the majority, of the D community, is *nix
users and my plotting lib is useless to them as long as it's DFL only.  I also
want to be able to create plots on some *nix machines I SSH into.  Therefore,
I want to get a *nix port working in the near future.  What is the most mature
GUI lib for D2 that supports *nix?  By mature, I mean:

1.  Any low-level C APIs are well wrapped in nice D OO APIs to the point where
you don't need to use the C APIs at least in the common cases.

2.  It compiles out of the box on 2.047.

3.  Preferably the documentation is decent, though I got by without this for
the original DFL version.

Also, I've tentatively named the multiple GUI lib version of this plotting lib
Plot2Kill.  Is this reasonable, or do we want to keep the names of our
scientific libs more boring and politically correct?


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