On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 10:39 PM, Maciek Gajewski
<address@hidden> wrote:
Based on that, computing the text extent means parsing the text
representation tree with a fontmetrics provider (here we thought
naturally about using FreeType library).
Whoa!
I don't get it - why such a features _inside_ octave? Isn't it backend stuff?
thought that octave only provides backend with text position (in plot
coordinates) and string (be it plain or TeX). Why such a low-level features
in core graphics code?
For several reasons, but the 3 main ones are:
- we want any backend to produce more or less the same graphics results
- we want to avoid duplicate coding effort in backends and provide
a common framework where possible.
- grouping coding power instead of spreading it (we already have so
few people to do the work...)
You could go for a simple "draw_text" method in the backend, but this
mean that each backend would have to implement its own TeX parser,
potentially producing different results or different support level (the backend
A support this symbol, while the backend B does not).