Hi,

I am not sure about the difference between PGFplot and tikz but I
would like to know if, for 3D diagrams/figures, a 3-point perspective
instead of the usual orthogonal projection can be expected soon?

Thank you

On Mar 17, 3:37=A0pm, pluton <plutones...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am not sure about the difference between PGFplot and tikz but I
> would like to know if, for 3D diagrams/figures, a 3-point perspective
> instead of the usual orthogonal projection can be expected soon?
>
> Thank you

pgfplots is built on top of pgf, the base layer of tikz: you'll see
that the two share some development effort. I'm not sure what sort of
plot your after: could you point to an example.
--
Joseph Wright

> pgfplots is built on top of pgf, the base layer of tikz: you'll see
> that the two share some development effort.


thanks


> I'm not sure what sort of
> plot your after: could you point to an example.

I would like something similar to the beginning of this animated gif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Orthographic_camera_distance_focal_length.gif

against what is at the end (called parallel projection).

I am not sure about the vocabulary but I think that pgfplots offers
parallel projections only for 3D objects, and perspective projections
are nicer, to my tastes.

Thanks

> pgfplots is built on top of pgf, the base layer of tikz: you'll see
> that the two share some development effort.


thanks


> I'm not sure what sort of
> plot your after: could you point to an example.

I would like something similar to the beginning of this animated gif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Orthographic_camera_distance_focal_length.gif

against what is at the end (called parallel projection).

I am not sure about the vocabulary but I think that pgfplots offers
parallel projections only for 3D objects, and perspective projections
are nicer, to my tastes.

Thanks

pluton <plutonesque@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I am not sure about the difference between PGFplot and tikz but I
> would like to know if, for 3D diagrams/figures, a 3-point perspective
> instead of the usual orthogonal projection can be expected soon?

maybe you're interested in sketch, as documented in
http://www.frontiernet.net/~eugene.ressler/
-- 
compro mobili vecchi - vendo mobili antichi

On 22 mar, 08:30, Giacomo Boffi <giacomo.bo...@polimi.it> wrote:
> pluton <plutones...@gmail.com> writes:
> > Hi,
>
> > I am not sure about the difference between PGFplot and tikz but I
> > would like to know if, for 3D diagrams/figures, a 3-point perspective
> > instead of the usual orthogonal projection can be expected soon?
>
> maybe you're interested in sketch, as documented inhttp://www.frontiernet.net/~eugene.ressler/

yes, thanks, I was not aware of sketch but my question still holds

Am 17.03.2010 16:37, schrieb pluton:

> I am not sure about the difference between PGFplot and tikz but I
> would like to know if, for 3D diagrams/figures, a 3-point perspective
> instead of the usual orthogonal projection can be expected soon?

without external programs it is impossible to handle perspective
views of 3D objects. pgf has to use the possibilities of TeX for
calculations and these are very limited ...

Herbert

> without external programs it is impossible to handle perspective
> views of 3D objects. pgf has to use the possibilities of TeX for
> calculations and these are very limited ...

and Luatex could help ?

On Mar 22, 6:23=A0pm, pluton <plutones...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > without external programs it is impossible to handle perspective
> > views of 3D objects. pgf has to use the possibilities of TeX for
> > calculations and these are very limited ...

Impossible is a strong word. Compared to the depth sorting required
for 3D plots, the perspective projection is by far less demanding and
simpler to implement. But the general statement is true, TeX lacks the
computing muscle required for more advanced 3D stuff. Considering the
limitations involved, I'm surprised the author of pgfplots decided to
add 3D features at all.

> and Luatex could help ?

To give you an example. I've been recently analysing how many
megabytes of TeX Live updates pours in over time. To have some fun
with this I made a graph with pgfplots and generated the data for it
at run time with a Lua script (sources available if anyone's
interested). Here are some timings:

reading TeX Live package database ... 5.15 MB done in 2.59 sec.
sorting packages wrt revision ... 3579 packages done in 0.04 sec.
writing out sorted data ... 0.13 MB done in 0.05 sec.
making graph with pgfplots ... done in 7.47 sec.

As you can see the entire run is dominated by pgfplots mainly because
doing any sort of computations in TeX is hugely inefficient.

So could luatex could help here? You bet it could. Number crunching in
Lua is a breeze as it has one of the fastest implementations among
dynamic languages (not to mention that one can also use a real
programming language for a change). The question is not really if but
when. My crystal ball tells me that this is still some years away,
though.

Cheers,

Tomek

very interesting clarifications. Thanks. Hopefully, time will fly
faster from now on..

On Mar 23, 2:45=A0pm, pluton <plutones...@gmail.com> wrote:
> very interesting clarifications. Thanks. Hopefully, time will fly
> faster from now on..

That will largely depend on the demand for LuaTeX. What's needed for
faster adoption is some killer app, err package, that will steer the
unwashed masses towards the new shiny.

Nothing will happen, though, until LuaTeX is at least included by the
two major TeX distributions and MiKTeX still doesn't have it.

Cheers,

Tomek