Hi Frank:
In your note to the list you said:
> (and I'll admit that JyVisAD goes some way towards doing this
- Tom Whitaker's graph/subs modules do hide a lot of the complexity -
but it seems like an afterthought, rather than an integral, serious part
of VisAD development)
Because the Jython developers made it so easy to connect with VisAD
objects, this was added as an afterthought in the 'core' VisAD
development. I saw it as the way to meet the need to get scientists
(users of IDL and Matlab) to use VisAD. What I'm doing with the
graph/subs modules is trying to provide interfaces to the richness of
VisAD without the necessity of script writers (like our scientists here)
having to know Java or necessarily VisAD. To that end, I'm always open
to suggestions for changes, additions, etc.
You also mentioned:
want using the Jython graph/subs modules, but it's so slow (taking 10
seconds to pop up visualization windows), that it's hardly usable.
Are there things in there that might be a candidate to add to
JPythonMethods? I've run across some iterative tasks that when done in
Jython were way too slow, so I recast them in Java.
The Jython interface will only evolve as the people using it push it.
Right now there are a handful of users outside Madison, and the rest are
the scientists here. Fortunately, Unidata has chosen this as the
scripting language in their IDV work, so I may get more ideas for useful
classes and methods from there as well. Obviously I have to take care
of the funded projects first, so that will impact what gets done/when...
Also:
At least with the standard
Perl/Python libraries, I know I can write the routines to draw what I
need to, in a day. And I think that's just too bad, because I can see
the power of VisAD - I just don't have the time to invest in getting to it.
Like I (and others) have mentioned, it is sometimes practical to
interface VisAD Data objects to other graphics libraries...but I'm
curious to know what basic functions are missing or awkward to
use...aside from the comments on aesthetics...? I put things like
drawLine and drawString in there to get started, and would be very happy
to add more interfaces and/or options to existing ones.
As always, thanks for your comments. Have a great Thanksgiving!
tom
--
Tom Whittaker (tomw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Space Science and Engineering Center
Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies
Phone/VoiceMail: 608.262.2759
