Replacement for KmPlot

[Aleix Pol]

On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 12:52 PM, todd rme <toddrme2178 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 1:28 PM, Percy Camilo Triveño Aucahuasi
> <percy.camilo.ta at gmail.com> wrote:
>> First aspect: the main goal of Khipu is to support the teaching process of
>> math concepts, thats why the main clients of this application are teachers
>> and this is the most important part, because it will avoid that Khipu become
>> into a "just a utility for plotting". You know math concepts (and their
>> properties) are easy to learn if you see it, indeed, I propose this basic
>> work-flow for the application:
>>
>> Step 1: Consume a repository/collection* of mathematical objects** (this
>> step allow to select objects from the repository) then
>> Step 2: Categorize/group those selected objects
>> Step 3: Study their specific properties
>> Step 4: Provide a way to deploy/export the work
>>
>> *The repository is a collection of math expressions and meta-data that
>> define each object
>> **Here, objects are any kind of math concept that can be plotted (specially
>> functions)
>>
>> For example, if a teacher want to work with plane curves (conics) he/she may
>> use the repository of "Famous Conics" and, this way, have all the objects
>> ready for study (step 1) Later, the teacher can group some objects with a
>> criteria (his criteria): "This ones will be used for exam 1", "This others
>> for the class" ... and so on (step 2) Step 3 will depend of what properties
>> of conics (for each group) he/she wants to study. Step 4 involve some form
>> of export their work (it could be a snapshots or animations inside the
>> application): this way he/she can use the output for the class.
>>
>> Currently[2] there is an implementation for step 2 (and partially: step 1) I
>> hope you can help me with ideas for step 3 and 4, and if is possible take
>> advantage of the forums for this task.
>>
>> Second aspect is the technical part of this replacement process. First
>> place, I will port all KmPlot's features (that I can) to Khipu: is important
>> not to drop the work of KmPlot that can be useful.
>>
>> To avoid the duplication of code: all the features related to
>> plotting/analysis of objects will be inside analitza (KAlgebra
>> parser/symbolic library) in a library called analitzaplot: KAlgebra will use
>> the library for plot some functions too. This library will focus on 4 tasks:
>>
>> * Manage the core objects (like curves/surfaces/...)
>> * Analyze those objects (its geometry, math properties, ...)
>> * Draw/Animate those objects in a decoupled way (just painter/opengl code)
>> ... this way we can use the code on widgets or other kind of GUI controls.
>> Also, the colors of what be painted (objects and its attributes, drawing
>> area, ...) will be chosen carefully to respect accessibility: in the same
>> way you can change the colors of the background area in KmPlot, the library
>> will expose the necessary API for this kind of customization.
>> * Manage the repository of objects (GHNS comes to my mind) The text of the
>> repository files will be translated by our exceptional l10n team. For
>> example if one repository file contains the words "Spiral of Archimedes"
>> this should be translated.
>>
>> Currently Khipu is in playground and analitzaplot is in a branch of analitza
>> (the branch is called aucahuasi/analitzaplot)
>>
>> Remember this is a work in process (Khipu and analitzaplot) and even the
>> library may change right now, however you can see a preview of the API in
>> [3]
>>
>> Finally, I hope others applications can use this library to visualize math
>> concepts (for example: currently many backends of Cantor show only images
>> and not a widget that improve the graphical result) I ask to you: take a
>> look in the work and tell me what do you think; I'm very open to listen
>> others ideas, so please help me with yours.
>
> Let me clarify one thing: have the features from kmplot been moved to
> kalgebra?  Are the additional plotting types it seems this provides
> being integrated into kalgebra?
>
> I can fully understand the desire to have a teaching application based
> on the plotting library.  However, I think it is important not to
> forget that a major goal of teaching plotting is so people can use
> those plots for practical purposes.  So I think it would be a mistake
> to focus exclusively on the teaching and neglect the people who
> actually need to use those plots in everyday life.
>
> -Todd
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It would be interesting if you tried Khipu. It's nothing like what you
described.

The kmplot part is just a subset of all the things khipu can do. The
KAlgebra part means that Khipu is using analitza (kalgebra's parsing,
execution and plotting framework) for plotting. Percy has also
improved this framework to fit all the needs for khipu that KAlgebra
will be able to take advantage of.

Aleix