[gradsusr] grads 2 widgets

[Davide Sacchetti]

Yes, you are right for hard copies.
I'd like better looking output to be available not only to hardcopies
but also to the display for interactive applications.

For what I understood the downsides using X11 display are:
 * worse fonts
 * worse contouring
 * no transparency

While with Cairo:
 * slower
 * no widgets

In attacch. you may find radar reflectivity (with transparency) over
illuminated orography (it's just a gxout shade of slope) ... available
either on display and hardcopy with Cairo. I'd like to add buttons but
I can't with Cairo, while with X11 I can't overlay transparent
reflectivity. (The picture has been captured dumping Xwindow, with
gxprint I got an error: libpng warning: Image width exceeds user limit
in IHDR; libpng warning: Image height exceeds user limit in IHDR)

Anyway I'm writing a grads script emulating grads buttons behavior on
Cairo ... so actually I'm working around the problem (obviously if
somebody is interested I could share it).

Have a nice day
Davide

On Fri, 2017-10-06 at 20:08 +0000, Jennifer M Adams wrote:
> 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 gradsu
> > sr.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
> > _______________________________________________
> > gradsusr mailing list
> > gradsusr at gradsusr.org
> > http://gradsusr.org/mailman/listinfo/gradsusr
> 
> --
> Jennifer Miletta Adams
> Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA)
> George Mason University
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> gradsusr mailing list
> gradsusr at gradsusr.org
> http://gradsusr.org/mailman/listinfo/gradsusr
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