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

Pushed. Included are the plot/pict and plot/bitmap modules, which export 
`plot' and `plot3d' work-a-likes. The documentation has the details.

The only thing left now is to break the package up. *rolls up sleeves*

Neil ⊥

On 10/09/2013 12:10 PM, Stephen Chang wrote:
> 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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>>>
>>
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