Re: Updates and summer efforts

[hilaire@iname.com]

About Dr Geo:

I've recently upload the version 0.7.9 of Dr Geo.
This version include a rewritten user guide in french using the DOCBOOK
DTD. I use this DTD over LinuxDoc because it allows to include gif image
in the document.
It comes with bugs fixes, new objects and figure from contributor. Read
the log page on the Dr Geo web page to know more.
This archive also come with binary for Intel GNU/LINUX.

For the future moves of Dr Geo I see three directions :

1. to continue to add more geometric object (polygon, conic). Adding new
object does not imply working with GTK. More on the developer FAQ with the
distribution.

2. XML file format for figure and macro construction. At this moment I
have some problem how to encode, nicely, geometric object in XML. I need
to dip into this.
For this I need an API to allow the creation of object from XLM string.
The libXML (from the Gnome distribution, but it doesn"t need it) is the
only lib I saw. But the interface to parse XML is quite low level.
I may be happy if someone would help into this.


3. using Genius Calculator and is interpreted language (GEL). I would like
to integrate GEL in Dr Geo. This would allow :
  - to define math expression/script which could rely on objects of the
figure, for example : a GEL script could use the property of a line of the
figure (slope, direction vector) to make some computation and then
returning the result on the figure
  - to add action button on the figure, this action button could be
written using GEL script (for example a script to make animation)
For this I need an API, not the same for XML, who allows a GEL user to
get info from a Dr Geo object (for exemple drgeo_circle_radius(object_ref)
to get the radius of a circle)

The GEL language is very nice and friendly, kid can use it, some exemple :

0<x<50   // a vaid boolean expresion

|x-1|    // instead of abs(x-1)

function f(x)=(0<x<10)*cos(x)+(10<=x<20)*sin(x)    // to define function
by interval

It can compute with arbitrary precision.

I hope Micha can add symbolic feature to it

However, the embedded version is not ready yet.


In more general, I want to keep Dr Geo Gnome-KDE agnostic.
I think the Gnome-KDE have a serious problem to resolve for a healthy
future of GNU/LInux on the desktop.


Hilaire Fernandes 

Dr Geo project http://www.drgeo.seul.org