On Oct 10, 10:40 am, Jason Grout <jason-s...@creativetrax.com> wrote: > On 10/9/11 3:19 AM, Jeroen Demeyer wrote: > > > On 2011-10-08 01:36, jsymons wrote: > >> Maybe some of you, based on the experience of using it, could explain > >> better than me what are the advantages/disadvantages with respect to > >> Tachyon renderer. > > I think it is something very different from the Tachyon renderer. > > Tachyon is a ray-tracing for 3D rendering, Asymptote is a vector drawing > > language. So I guess we should compare not with Tachyon, but with > > LaTeX+TikZ. As far as I know, we do use TikZ in Sage and I don't > > immediately see a compelling advantage to switch to Asymptote. > > Asymptote does 3d graphics as well, so that is why it should be compared > to Tachyon. If Asymptote generated 3d *vector* graphics (unlike > Tachyon, and like the matplotlib 3d engine), I could see it adding > something of real value to Sage. But from what I saw of the examples > online, it appeared that the pdf files of 3d graphics were simply > bitmapped graphics wrapped in a pdf file. > > As for 2d graphics, matplotlib already generates pdf, ps, svg, etc., so > we already have a very powerful 2d vector graphics solution we use. How > does Asymptote compare with matplotlib for 2d graphics, and does someone > want to add a new backend to our 2d graphics facilities for Asymptote? > > Also, if it's not callable as a library yet, it may be too soon to have > this discussion (especially since we already have a nice library-based > solution for 2d graphics, like matplotlib). > > Thanks, > > Jason
It seems to me that one of the coolest things about Asymptote -- an actual programming language with (simple) equation solving -- is already in Sage, which means that it would be somewhat superfluous to have it in the drawing engine as well. One could argue that then the Sage interface could be smaller, lines-of-code-wise, but on the other hand, we would need a huge range of Sage functions to wrap the entire language of Asymptote. This kind of defeats the purpose for both developers and users. I would be more for putting the extra effort into making more customisable and complex functions for matplotlib, taking advantage of the fact that we are already in a powerful math and programming language. But yeah, if it could generate 3d vector, then I would be more for it :-) Is there even a file-format for supporting this well, though? For example, if it had to be saved in SVG, one would need to approximate shading and color-transitions using linear and radial gradients as well as blurring, I believe. Probably not very easy... Regards, Johan -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
