Re: J/Link MathCanvas/Graphics/Interaction
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg27214] Re: J/Link MathCanvas/Graphics/Interaction
- From: tgayley at wolfram.com (Todd Gayley)
- Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 03:20:52 -0500 (EST)
- Organization: Wolfram Research, Inc.
- References: <96096k$oem@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
On 9 Feb 2001 03:19:32 -0500, murphee <werner.schuster at netway.at> wrote: >yo Group (especially Todd Gayley), > >I am using the (magnificent) J/Link to do some interactive Mathematics; >eg: Plot a graph (eg Sine curve) and a Point, and allow the user to grab >the Point with the >mouse and drag it along the graph; > >allright, doesnt sound like much, but it's just an example to make clear >what I >want to do; > >now, the Problem is, I can use the evaluateToImage,... methods to receive a >Bitmap (in GIF Format) of >the Plot from Mathematica, >but what I would need would be the Position of the Objects in the Plot (in >my example: Graph, Point) >relative to the bitmap I receive from the evaluateToImage method, >so I know when the mouse is "in" one of these objects (in order to know >when the user wants to "grab" the object); > >currently, I cannot get this; I would have to guess the Position of the >objects, but changing one Parameter in the >Plot would make this guess useless again (and the whole thing couldn't be >done dynamically); > >I haven't yet found a way in J/Link to do this, or am I just thinking in >the wrong direction? > >if there is no simple solution available in J/Link, maybe that could be >something for J/Link 2.0 ... >since you're (you = J/Link Maintainers) at the "source" of the Production >of the Bitmap, wouldn't it be possible >to somehow extract/preserve these parameters and allow the user to access >them; >from what I know, you use the psrender.exe programm to render the >PostScript output to the GIF file; >maybe that could be a place to get that info from; > >I hope someone might help me here, >Thanx in advance, >murphee Murphee, Several people have asked for a similar feature. What is required is to be able to translate coordinates in the bitmap image into coordinates of the original plot. The notebook front end can do this, as evidenced by its ability to show plot coordinates as you float the mouse over a plot with the Ctrl key held down. Unfortunately, it is hard to do. The front end can do it because it has a PostScript renderer built in. There is really no good way to get this information in Java right now.The psrender program does not provide it, and that program will be phased out before long anyway. Future changes to Mathematica's graphics model will probably make this task straightforward, but for now the best solution involves a bit of work. One method is to render Mathematica Graphics expressions in Java yourself. You can use FullGraphics to get Mathematica to expand a graphic into an explicit list of primitives. Things that are normally specified only as options with values like Automatic or True (e.g., Ticks, Axes, etc) are represented in terms of Line, Text, and other graphics primitives. You can then send this to Java, parse through it, and draw it. An obvious candidate for the data structure to maintain on the Java side is SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), an XML application. SVG would even take care of things like firing events when objects in the image were clicked and dragged. The SVG specification is still not finalized, and my understanding is that the APIs, tools, and viewers for working with SVG are not universally solid yet. It is possible that something like this will be present in a not-too-distant release of J/Link. In the meantime, a motivated programmer could write their own implementation that worked at least reasonably well without too much effort. Todd Gayley Wolfram Research