tbr@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (thomas.b.reddington) (06/29/89)
Can anyone enlighten me to as the current state of GKS? My last experience with the package was back in 1984. At the time we used GKS to add limited graphics to an interactive language developed for UNIX. Our first problem was when we found that it could not be compiled on the target machine. The second was that the size of the object file increased by a factor of four. The third was that the word "interactive" suddenly took on a very different meaning. Needless to say, graphics was never added to the language. There are two parts to my question. One has to do with the scope of the functions supplied for drawing. Can I draw circles with inner and outer radii with some specified pattern on a bit plane for instance? The other has to do with the GKS model. I am familiar with Smalltalk, NeWS (PostScript) and have been investigating and building direct manipulation interfaces in Lisp on a lisp machine for the past 5 years. Portability is not an issue with me. Expressiveness of the model is however. How does GKS compare with other models? Is it a lower level model that I can use to implement a portable NeWS in? How well will GKS fit in with X-windows? I have been reluctant to do any of my work on X because of the lack of a robust graphics package. Will GKS on X solve my problems? Thanks, Tom Reddington att!vilya!tbr