Gfx

From: [at]} <Stan>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 99 13:17:14 PST

Re:

> Hi:
>
> Alan Freed brought to my attention a graphical library
> by Erich Oswald named Gfx. The description looks interesting.
> Did anybody consider porting it to BlackBox? Those who have
> not heard of Gfx, please have a look at
> http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~oswald/GfxOverview.html
>
> I am asking because:
>
> (1) Gfx looks like a useful tool to me;
>
> (2) Other than the vendor-supplied graphic primitives
> (which are very good), BlackBox lacks graphics libraries;

This is a weakness of the current framework.

> (3) In general BB is a component system with very few
> components available, other than those developed by
> the vendor. This means that BB is less useful than
> it could be, because of the overhead caused by reinventing
> the wheel by everybody who needs anything beyond standard
> BB components.

I agree. It would be good to have an extensible graphics subsystem
similar to the Forms and Text subsystems where a novice user could
draw and store simple shapes and to which an experienced programmer
could add features.

> This last point leads me to ask a question whether BB community
> should not consider sharing what different parties have developed.
> Clemens Szyperski said in his book that a perfect system with
> no users will whither, while an imperfect one that has users will
> expand. That is sort of how BB situation looks to me.

I would be willing to contribute to a graphics project, perhaps
by supervising students to work on it.

Stan
=============================
J. Stanley Warford
Professor of Computer Science
Pepperdine University
Malibu, CA 90263
warford{([at]})nowhere.xy
=============================

> Wojtek
>
> Wojtek Skulski
> X-Ray Instrumentation Associates
> 2513 Charleston Rd #207, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
> Tel: 650 903 9980 ext. 16 Fax: 650 903 9887
> E-Mail: skulski{([at]})nowhere.xy
Received on Tue Mar 23 1999 - 22:22:38 UTC