[gradsusr] grads 2 widgets

[Jennifer M Adams]

Gary and Davide —
It is unclear to me how using GrADS version 2.2 with the -d X11 option does not meet your needs. You have the widgets for the display, but can still use Cairo graphics for the better looking output. The only downside is that the X11 display doesn’t look exactly like the Cairo hardcopy -- is is more of an approximation. 

Why would it be necessary to switch display plug-ins while GrADS is running instead of choosing one at startup? Even if you *could* do this, you would lose everything in the metabuffer (the place in memory where all the graphics elements are stored) when you terminate one graphics plug-in and reinitialize another. 

- - - - - -

Hmm. I wrote the above and went back to check on my ‘approximation’ statement and found a bug when using font files with -d X11. Using default fonts with ’set hershey off’ seems to work okay. That is something I can fix. Please let me know if there are other circumstances when the use of the "classic” graphics plug-ins fails to satisfy. 

—Jennifer




> On Oct 6, 2017, at 1:57 PM, Love, Mr. Gary, Contractor, Code 7542 <gary.love.ctr at nrlmry.navy.mil> wrote:
> 
> Hi developers,
> 
> We at NRL have the same problem since we make intensive use of the widgets. 
> Our plan was to stay at version 2.0 for our GUI's and use 2.1 for background 
> jobs.  A method to invoke the X11 widgets so we could maintain a single 
> version would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Gary Love
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gradsusr-bounces at gradsusr.org [mailto:gradsusr-bounces at gradsusr.org] On 
> Behalf Of Davide Sacchetti
> Sent: Friday, October 06, 2017 1:24 AM
> To: GrADS Users Forum
> Subject: [gradsusr] grads 2 widgets
> 
> Hello developers:
> just some basic consideration and a question/request about GrADS 2
> 
> Since 2013-12-16 with Version 2.1.a1 all the graphics are handled by the Cairo 
> library.
> Besides graphics quality has really improved a lot (fonts, contour,
> etc.) there at least two drawbacks:
> * widgets have been temporarily disabled
> * graphics generation is markedly slower
> 
> In our center we make an intensive use of widgets (see attacc.) so we can't 
> switch to recent versions (unless using -d X11).
> 
> Waiting for widgets to be enabled ... it would be great to have a chance to 
> load X11 or Cairo on the fly. Something like perl modules commands "use" and 
> "no": use X11, no X11, use Cairo, ...
> 
> In my mind I could use dropmenu in X11 and then display in Cairo but I have 
> not idea if this request could be accomplished with a reasonable effort or not 
> ...
> 
> Best regards
> Davide Sacchetti
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--
Jennifer Miletta Adams
Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA)
George Mason University