Re: RSI / CreaSo survey: Whish list

[hahn(at)hrz.th-darmstadt.de (Norbert Hahn)]

kspencer@s.psych.uiuc.edu (Kevin Spencer) wrote:

>In case this hasn't been brought up yet, I would like WYSIWYG graphics.
>It is a pain in the ass to have to format plots differently for output
>to the screen or to a Postscript file.

Well, that depends on how you interpret WYSIWYG:
I second this idea when the display shows faithfully
what you get printed. However, the format of the
display 1024x768 pixels  should be read 1024/768 = 4/3
while the printed paper is 11x8.5 inch (  11/8.5 = 1.29 ) in the
U.S. and all European sizes have a ration of sqrt(2), being
1.41. Actually you have the following choices:

a) Setup your plot for the final result (paper) and view
   intermediate results on your screen in the same ratio.
   I would call this WYSIWYG.

b) Setup your plot for the screen and leave some unused
   parts on the paper. WYSIWYG too.

c) Have intelligent setups for all output devices and IDL
   care for correct results. Difficult to achieve! Although this is
   what IDL currently tries to do. I modified  phaser.pro (which
   was supplied in the old userlib) to correctly setup the 
   PostScript driver for our various PS printers. This is friendly
   to our end-users but requires some labour when a new version
   of IDL arrrives.

And what should a new version of IDL do ?

It should support all versions discussed above but in a more
general manner: IDL should keep track of how a plot was generated
on the last active output device and should automatically repeat this
sequence when the output device is changed. Of course IDL has to
adapt to the new output device.

This can be done: Before we migrated to IDL we had some 2-D-
visualization program which had two selectable output devices
called primary device and secondary device. The standard setup
was the display for the primary device and i.e. a PostScript driver 
for the secondary device. All commands send to the primary device
were stored in a temporary memory and re-interpreted for the
secondary device when the command "send" was entered.

>-----------------------------------------------------------
>Kevin Spencer
>Cognitive Psychophysiology Laboratory and Beckman Institute
>University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
>kspencer@p300.cpl.uiuc.edu / kspencer@psych.uiuc.edu
>-----------------------------------------------------------

Add your comments here....

Norbert Hahn