PDL::Graphics::Prima
A PDL graphing library using the Prima toolkit.
This collection of modules provides a PDL-centric 2D graphing library that is fast, intelligent, multi-platform and highly interactive. Fast because it's built on the PDL::Drawing::Prima bindings, which make use of the PDL threading engine to quickly execute large sets of drawing operations. Intelligent because I have put a lot of thought into important behavior like autoscaling and smart tick marking and they Do The Right Thing almost every time, without the need for manual manipulation. Multi-platform and highly interactive because it is built upon Prima, the Perl-centric multi-platform set of drawing functions and GUI toolkit, and because interactive behavior like panning and zooming are built right into the widget.
For more information, see the documentation for PDL::Graphics::Prima. If you're new, you should check out the documentation for PDL::Graphics::Prima::Simple. I have also posted a YouTube video demonstrating a number of cool features of the library at http://youtu.be/WILd2XTz3F4.
INSTALLATION
There are a number of ways to install this module. The simplest is to install it using CPAN:
cpan PDL::Graphics::Primaor using cpanm:
cpanm PDL::Graphics::PrimaIf you have your hands on the actual source code (from the git repository listed below, or by looking at this module from the CPAN shell), you would do the following:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make installWindows users will need to use nmake or dmake instead of make, depending on which compiler you are using.
Note that there are almost no tests for this distribution at the moment. Frankly, I'm not sure exactly how to go about testing this sort of distribution. One thought of mine is to write an interactive series of tests that asks the user to verify that the generated plots "look right," but I have not yet implemented any such tests. Patches welcome! However, there are a number of examples (and as such, test scripts) in the examples directory in the source distribution if you want to take the library for a spin.
DEPENDENCIES
This module depends on PDL::Drawing::Prima, which has an important and nontrivial list of dependencies. However, if you have that module installed, this module should work.
PDL::Graphics::Prima requires Perl 5.10, although it will soon be relaxed to Perl 5.8. If you don't have that version of Perl, I recommend installing Strawberry Perl if you're on Windows, or using perlbrew if you're on Linux or Mac.
DEVELOPMENT STATUS AND REPOSITORY
This project is being actively developed at Github. Find the latest at https://github.com/run4flat/PDL-Graphics-Prima.
This project is currently in alpha. I say this not because the software is unstable to execute but because the API is likely to undergo some substantial revisions under this name. The interface will have settled when the distribution hits v 1.00, at which point any API changes will coincide with an increment in the major version number.
In other words, please play around with this library and use it if you like. However, if you use it in production code, be sure to pay close attention to the PDL mailing list for updates regarding incompatible changes to the library. If you find yourself using the library quite a bit, you should follow it on Github and contribute your thoughts as it progresses.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE
Portions of this module's code are copyright (c) 2011 The Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois.
Portions of this module's code are copyright (c) 2011-2012 Northwestern University.
This module's documentation are copyright (c) 2011-2012 David Mertens.
All rights reserved.
This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
Author: David Mertens <dcmertens.perl.csharp@gmail.com>
Note that my email is intentionally obfuscated. Knowing that I am a Perl programmer, you can probably remove the part that does not belong.