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- Path: news.onramp.net!enterprise
- From: oa@iah.com (Rick Lutowski)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: Need Portable Presentation Graphics
- Date: 22 Jan 1996 18:19:59 GMT
- Organization: On-Ramp; Individual Internet Connections; Dallas/Ft Worth/Houston, TX USA
- Message-ID: <4e0kgf$1pn@news.onramp.net>
- References: <4din75$g0$1@mhadg.production.compuserve.com>
- Reply-To: oa@iah.com (Rick Lutowski)
- NNTP-Posting-Host: iah05.iah.com
-
- Guido Eiben <100656.603@CompuServe.COM> wrote:
- >I am looking for a C/C++ presentation graphics library for both
- >MS-Windows (16/32-Bit) and (SCO-) Unix. It should support
- >WYSIWYG printing.
- >...
- >I already searched on the net but portability seems too hard a
- >requirement to be met. But you can find presentation graphics in
- >quite a lot of portable apps, don't you.
- >
- >So, where can I find portable presentation graphics libraries?
-
- You are correct that it is not easy to find highly-portable
- graphics libraries for the platforms you mentioned, especially
- at reasonble prices (say, under $1000). There are presentation
- graphics packages on the market that are supported on a wide range
- of platforms, such as CA-DISSPLA, but you'd gag on the prices
- (multiples of $10,000 for DISSPLA). Supporting a wide range of
- systems at _reasonable_ cost is one of the goals of the Programmer's
- Reusable Libraries (PRL).
-
- Of the six libraries in Ver 0.7, four are graphics-related and can
- support presentation graphics with bar charts, pie charts, and
- a wide variety of 2D and 3D function plots. Much more exciting
- presentation capabilities are under development for Ver. 0.8.
-
- PRL is currently supported under DEC VMS and 10 different UNIX
- platforms spanning the range from Crays to Linux PCs. PRL is designed
- to be easily portable (the Linux port took 1-2 days), so porting to
- SCO should be a piece of cake. The biggest supported-systems hole
- right now is Windows; the port to Windows (95, 3.1, or both) is
- currently scheduled to start sometime around April.
-
- You did not say if your need is immediate, or longer-term. If the
- latter, and you do not mind investing a few days of your own time,
- you could get a UNIX version of PRL and do the SCO port yourself, since
- source is included with all purchased copies (the mega-buck vendors
- rarely supply you their source). SCO will be the hardest part of your
- requirement to meet, since very few graphics library vendors support
- SCO, but it should be easy with PRL. The availablility of the
- Windows version is more just a matter of time. At that point, you
- will have available what you are looking for, except for the C
- requirement.
-
- PRL's native language is Fortran, but run the source through the AT&T
- "f2c" program, and you should have a C version that works just fine,
- based on reports I have received from users who have tried
- this under Linux. Other users just call the compiled Fortran
- object code directly from C. I do NOT recommend this, but it might
- work if the C and Fortran compilers are compatible.
-
- If it sounds like PRL might be your answer, but you want more info,
- e-mail a simple message like ?PRL? to oa@iah.com and you'll receive
- several files worth of detailed information (including the price
- matrix), or visit the Object Access web page at http://www.iah.com/oa/
-
- Rick Lutowski
- --
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- | Rick Lutowski oa@iah.com 713-332-7281 |
- | Object Access http://www.iah.com/oa/ 713-554-7617 |
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