Re: Top 10 for old farts

[davidf(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)]

Pavel Romashkin (promashkin@cmdl.noaa.gov) writes:
 
> I am not arguing about IDLgr* speed with Paul, or, God forbid, David,
> but I find that with today's computers even object graphics is not that
> slow. I don't use multitudes of graphic objects, but rendering a few
> line plots with zoom, point selection, deletion, calculation, adding and
> removing temporary grPlots, etc. - I notice so little difference
> compared with direct graphics that it is not detrimental to the
> application. I think that once faster machines become more widespread,
> 3D object graphics will find more use. On a Pentium 60 w/o OpenGL, I
> agree, it is intolerable.

Surely even NOAA can afford to buy Paul a better machine
than that! :-)

My personal opinion is probably close to Pavel's. I don't
think speed has held up the acceptance of object graphics.
The speed is surely acceptable. It has been the hours it
takes to put together a simple plot from the ground up,
and then the lack of printing capability once you got there.

Vector printing capability has fixed part of the problem,
but we are still faced with too few higher-level programs.

Cheers,

David

P.S. I suppose a case can be made that having Insight
as the flagship example of object graphics programming
has set the cause back 5-10 years, but I'm going to
stay out of it. :-)

-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
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