Re: MAPM & GMT Package design?

[Clark Dunson]

Thanks everybody!

You are correct Orion.  Also there is the Debian package:

"Package: octave-gmt (4.5.12-1)

Support of GMT grid files for Octave

GMT is a collection of tools that allow users to manipulate (x,y) and (x,y,z) data sets (including filtering, trend fitting, gridding, projecting, etc.) and produce Encapsulated PostScript File (EPS) illustrations ranging from simple x-y plots through contour maps to artificially illuminated surfaces and 3-D perspective views in black and white, gray tone, hachure patterns, and 24-bit color.

This package provides an interface for GNU Octave to query and read/write GMT grid files."

I have worked with scene graphs for OpenGL in a number of ways.  It seems a good way to go here might be to use a directed acyclic graph (DAG) like Open Inventor, Open Scene Graph, etc.  I've looked about a bit at how these types of graphs can be implemented in Octave and I found this from Muthiah Annamalai. (BTW thanks muthu for the CODA article on how to extend Octave!):

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-octave/2006-10/msg00020.html

A graph implemented in this manner would be composed of two classes, one for grouping (Octave cell array), the other, leaf nodes for drawing (GMT Map Layer base class).  This architecture would allow prior layer assemblies to be moved around to other maps in a straightforward manner using standard Octave syntax.  With a generic traversal iterator, the Postscript header and overlay commands can be managed by the iterator.  Anybody who wants to utilize other node types or perform intermediate calculations, etc. could do it by subclassing the iterator.  Ideas?

Anyways, I ramble.  I won't decide until after Maker Faire this weekend whether I'll work on the project.

Thanks again -

Clark

On May 14, 2014, at 9:33 PM, Orion Poplawski wrote:

On 05/14/2014 02:28 PM, Clark Dunson wrote:

Hey everybody;

I'm thinking of marrying GMT (Generic Mapping Tools) and Octave to create a mapping toolbox.  It's a sizeable project, so I started cutting my teeth by first bringing together MAPM (http://www.tc.umn.edu/~ringx004/mapm-main.html) and Octave as a learning exercise.  That was last week, and I got pretty far.  I can auto-generate the bindings as oct-files with help info for DEFUN_DLD, made derived octave_base_value, etc.  But this morning I discovered cdemill's wrapping of GPM and the mptoolbox, and learned that we already have an APM toolbox!  Oh well, the learning experience was good, perhaps the biggest lesson being to check more thoroughly about whether I am duplicating effort! :)

 GMT 4 had a matlab/octave API/interface that was lost with GMT5.  As I
understand it reproducing it is on the GMT team's todo list, so you
might want to check it with the GMT folks as well.

- Orion


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Orion Poplawski
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