[racket-dev] separate plot library into gui-requiring and non-gui-requiring

Thanks Neil!

plot/no-gui sounds fine to me. I'll give it a try after you push.

On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 12:08 PM, Neil Toronto <neil.toronto at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm splitting up the "plot" package today.
>
> Stephen: You'll be able to install "plot-lib", then (require plot/pict) to
> get a `plot' function work-a-like that outputs picts instead of snips, or
> (require plot/bitmap) to get one that outputs bitmaps. You could easily make
> a "plot-no-gui-lib" package that contains only a "plot/main.rkt" that wraps
> one of those modules, if/when you make a web-only Racket distribution.
>
> Anyone: Is it worth the extra complexity to make a "plot-typed-lib" and a
> "plot-typed-gui-lib"? Or should I put the typed interface in "plot-lib" and
> "plot-gui-lib"?
>
> Also, what's a good name for the module that exports `plot-file',
> `plot-pict', `plot-bitmap', `plot/dc', and the 3d versions of those
> functions? Something like plot/no-gui?
>
> Neil ⊥
>
>
> On 10/08/2013 01:08 PM, Robby Findler wrote:
>>
>> I think it is worth having a plot/pict or pict/plot library that doesn't
>> depend on racket/GUI/base (or maybe it would be better to disentangle
>> snips). In any case, we have many others such libraries that turn on
>> avoiding racket/gui/base for exactly this reason.
>>
>> Robby
>>
>> On Tuesday, October 8, 2013, Neil Toronto wrote:
>>
>>     On 10/08/2013 11:22 AM, Stephen Chang wrote:
>>
>>         Short question:
>>         Is there a way to separate the gui-requiring parts of plot from
>> the
>>         non-gui-requiring parts?
>>
>>         Long question:
>>         Many people have expressed pleasant surprise with the
>>         plot-evaluating
>>         ability of the racket pastebin Sam and I are working on.
>>
>>         Most of the effort is due to scribble's nice sandbox evaluation
>>         capabilities but to get it fully working, I had to hack the plot
>>         library in my racket install.
>>
>>         The problem is that plot uses racket/gui/base too eagerly but the
>>         server has no display, resulting in a gtk initialization error. I
>>         ultimately got around it by just commenting out all the gui parts
>> of
>>         plot, knowing that it would never get invoked, but obviously this
>> is
>>         an ugly solution.
>>
>>         I should say that I don't think plot is at fault. The plot library
>>         does lazy-require racket/gui/base but that's not good enough
>> because
>>         the laziness has to propagate to other requires that also require
>>         racket/gui/base (ie plot/snip) which isnt the case. But this
>> cannot
>>         work anyways because lazy-require only works with functions and
>> some
>>         of the things imported by plot/snip are classes.
>>
>>         I spent awhile trying to separate the gui-requiring parts of
>>         plot but
>>         was unsuccessful. Maybe the change has to be in racket/gui/base
>>         itself
>>         (related to PR 12465) I don't really know. I guess I'm just
>> looking
>>         for additional insight. Naively, slideshow/pict and 2htdp/draw
>>         do not
>>         have this problem so it seemed like it should be possible.
>>
>>
>>     Right, racket/gui/base is necessary for snips. In all the
>>     documentation that uses plots (plot, math, images) I've used the
>>     following hack when setting up the evaluators:
>>
>>        (eval '(require (rename-in (except-in plot plot plot3d)
>>                                   [plot-pict  plot]
>>                                   [plot3d-pict  plot3d])))
>>
>>     You could also rename `plot-bitmap' and `plot3d-bitmap'. (The docs
>>     use picts because they look better rendered in a PDF.) It wouldn't
>>     be hard to make a module that does that and provides everything.
>>     (Except possibly `plot-snip', `plot-frame', etc.)
>>
>>     I'm reluctant to single out one way of rendering when the GUI isn't
>>     available. Picts look nicer when scaled, but bitmaps look nicer when
>>     unscaled (plots are subpixel-rendered in this case). Picts take much
>>     more time to redraw, but for bitmaps it's just a blit.
>>
>>     Neil ⊥
>>
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