[GRASS-dev] discussion: replacing ps.map

[tlaronde at polynum.com]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2007 at 10:28:42AM +0200, Moritz Lennert wrote:
> 
> Thierry, I have a very vague memory that you said something about KerGIS 
> being able to directly produce vectorized output. Is this true ? How do 
> you do this ?

By using the legacy RASTERLIB now called DRAWLIB in KerGIS. The
documentation about the library is misleading. It is not raster oriented
if you take juste the library that is just an API and a communication
facility to monitors. The API is a drawing API: you draw not only raster
images, but lines, polylines etc.

In KerGIS, there is only one driver: the X11 one. And it uses the X11
vector drawing XLIB functions for lines etc.

In this sense, it is not difficult to implement a psdriver.

And, as I have already wrote in another thread, once you combine
vectorial icons (in KerGIS---internal version for now---these are done
by creating a font of symbols) keeping a description of the icons in a
format that can be easily rendered to eps (I chose MetaPOST/METAFONT),
and extending simply v.digit(1) to draw the bounding box of labels
(first render via MetaPOST whatever you want in TeX and retrieve the
size of the bounding box for display), the DRAWLIB has already anything
to scale and rotate glyphes, so a simple WYSIWYG could be easily made.

In KerGIS, I have just slightly extended the legacy capabilities. The
documentation about the DRAWLIB (legacy RASTERLIB) shall be reworked,
but the code is not bas as is.
-- 
Thierry Laronde (Alceste) <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
                 http://www.kergis.com/
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