[Axiom-developer] TeXmacs and Graphics

[C Y]

Andrey G. Grozin wrote:
> I started to do it some time ago (not recently, 
> don't remember exactly when). I only needed a little help. I posted some 
> questions to this list, and received 0 replies. Exactly 0. So I could 
> not proceed :-(

Are these the emails in question?

http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2005-08/msg00229.html
http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2005-09/msg00076.html

> An idea about graphics: why not use an existing powerful data 
> visualisation system instead of the current graphics viewer? Something 
> like ParaView, VisIt, or OpenDX. These systems are highly non-trivial, 
> and it would be a shame to re-implement a small fraction of their 
> functionality instead of just using them. And Axiom will just prepare 
> data files for them. They are all free, and available on many platforms.

This is a good idea. I think in theory the best possible visualization 
system would need to be tied closely to the core system, but I certainly 
agree that the ability to take advantage of these systems is desirable 
both as a short term measure and as a longer term feature.  I suspect 
the primary difficulty comes from most of us not knowing how to get 
started implementing such export abilities.

I know of those programs, but I don't know much about them.  I have 
installed ParaView and OpenDX in the past, but I have not done much with 
them.  IIRC ParaView and VisIt both use the VTK toolkit.  I have heard 
very good things about that toolkit and have wondered in the past if it 
wouldn't be capable of some truly stunning 3D plotting, but the learning 
curve to working with it always seemed a bit formidable, to say nothing 
of linking it to Lisp.  Those systems seem a little heavyweight for 
simple plot display, but of course there are likely to be many other 
applications.

There are other formants which would be useful.  Gnuplot is an obvious 
one, and I think Grace would be a useful target as well for 2D output. 
There are others. Probably once one such interface is made more would be 
reasonably straightforward, at least as far as simple export is concerned.

Cheers,
CY