Re: Easy way to make hard copies at full printer resolution

[Nick Bower <nick.bower(at)ssec.wisc.edu>]

> I would *love* it if the graphics window would simply remember what's
> been plotted, and be able to dump that out to the postscript device.
> A little print button at the top of the window would do wonders.  Does
> this work in Windows?
> 
> All of the programs found by Kristian are written in IDL, so
> necessarily try to solve the problem at the *front* end, e.g. by
> intercepting PLOT commands.  It would be much more simple and elegant
> to solve the problem at the back end in the graphics driver.  Has
> anybody ever written a graphics driver?

I do agree that it would be nice to have RSI address the problem so it
doesn't have to be addressed by users at the front-end.  But I also feel
it's more fundamental than improving one or two device back-ends, and it
would be nice to have it addressed by RSI as a direct graphics issue. 
imho, the direct graphics as a whole is a little painfull in this area,
and the plotting proceedures for any device are rediculously linear in
issuing plotting instructions.  Everyone knows that if you simply want
to change the axis scale, you have to go back and issue all the plot and
oplot commands all over again.  Not sure how other people feel, but I
was personally amazed by this when learning IDL.

So it seems the best way to achieve this functionality is to write your
own objects (again, a front-end approach as you pointed out), but that's
just not a good time-investment for most users.  So perhaps there is a
market a good commercial front-end package as David suggested.  (I
haven't seen any open source initiatives in my limited observation of
this group so am ruling out that).  I wouldn't mind seing a fairly
decent first cut at it however rather than something specific to the
postscript device only.

> Sure, it says somewhere in the IDL documentation that this would take
> too much memory.  Maybe five years ago, but we aren't in the stone
> ages any more.

I also agree the memory argument just doesn't cut the mustard anymore. 
RSI are being slack here.

nick

-- 

Nick Bower
Space Science and Engineering Center
University of Wisconsin - Madison
http://arm1.ssec.wisc.edu/~nickb