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From: amr@dukee.egr.duke.edu (Anthony M. Richardson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: EMAIL SURVEY: Graph Plotting Programs for Amiga
Message-ID: <933@cameron.egr.duke.edu>
Date: 8 Jun 90 13:13:52 GMT
References: <24673.266e2ff9@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
Sender: news@egr.duke.edu
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From article <24673.266e2ff9@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, by markv@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu:
> In article <8751@wehi.dn.mu.oz>, BAXTER_A@wehi.dn.mu.oz writes:

(stuff deleted)

>> I am also
>> somewhat surprised at never having recieved a non-beta bug report
>> for Multiplot... I'm sure it is not because of the absolute absence
>> of bugs. It occurred to me that it may be because no-one actually
>> uses it.
> 
> Couldn't help you there.  I'll try it, but one of the biggest Amiga
> problems is still painless output.  To this day there isn't ONE Amiga
> word processor and ANY kind of graphics program that will let me cut
> and paste NON-bitmap (ie object oriented) graphics.  But this isn't
> your fault.  The Amiga desperately needs a portable (simple is okay)
> IFF format that is as well supported as ILBM for object graphics.

That's a surprise to me.  I've been using AmigaTeX (which allows you
to include IFF files and Encapsulated PostScript) for about two
years. The PLPLOT plotting library can be used to create IFF, HPGL,
Aegis Draw, Tektronix, and Encapsulated PostScript graphs. (Except
for IFF, all of these are vector/object oriented graphics languages.)
This combination gives me text/graphics output superior to anything
else I've seen.

I agree that we might need some sort of object oriented graphics 
file format, but PostScript isn't too shabby and has become something
of a standard in DTP.  A recent posting by Tom Rokicki indicated that
he has decided to include support for importing PostScript files
into AmigaTex (you can do this now if you have a PostScript printer).
AmigaTeX can already include IFF files.  I guess my point is that
we don't necessarily need an Amiga specific object oriented format
when PostScript can do the job.  I would like to see more support
for importing and exporting PostScript.

Tony Richardson      amr@dukee.egr.duke.edu

p.s. ListPlot has been submitted to comp.binaries.amiga and should be
appearing soon.  It is a 2D plotting program based on PLPLOT with
loads of features.