[Haskell-cafe] [Haskell] ANN: craftwerk-0.1, craftwerk-cairo-0.1, craftwerk-gtk-0.1

[Vo Minh Thu]

2011/3/14 Malte Harder <malte.harder at googlemail.com>:
> Dear all,
>
> I just released the first version of the Craftwerk graphics library for
> 2d vector graphics. Craftwerk is intended to act as an abstract
> interface to different backend drivers. The library itself has a TikZ
> (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgf) driver builtin to output vector
> graphics for use in LaTeX documents. The craftwerk-cairo library
> supplies a Cairo output function to the library. The aim is to support
> these two backends in a seamless manner such that graphics created with
> either backend are not or nearly not distinguishable.
>
> The third package (craftwerk-gtk) contains convenience functions to
> display graphics created with craftwerk directly in a Gtk window,
> including the basic zooming, PDF & TikZ export via a file chooser
> dialog. It also allows to create a simple user interface that passes
> options to the rendering function.
>
> The feature support is rather rudimentary at the moment, but for current
> Cairo users most features should be already available from within the
> craftwerk API. The aim is to support more high level functions like TikZ
> offers.
>
> The project started when I realized that I need to prepare a lot of
> visualizations at university twice, once for display and once for print.
> I hope that this library proves to be useful for people with similar
> tasks. A great thing would be if the Chart library allows to plug
> another backend in. I haven't really looked into that, but this would
> allow me to leave Gnuplot and R behind for most purposes and at the same
> time get higher quality output that is better integrable.
>
> I started learning Haskell only half a year ago and this is my first
> real project. So far I have to say that I enjoy it very much. Therefore,
> if you find some weird constructions or have any comments about the
> design of the library, I'm looking forward for any feedback!
>
> The source repository can be found under:
> https://github.com/mahrz/Craftwerk
>
> and packages here:
> http://hackage.haskell.org/package/craftwerk-0.1
> http://hackage.haskell.org/package/craftwerk-cairo-0.1
> http://hackage.haskell.org/package/craftwerk-gtk-0.1

Hi Malte,

Your project sounds very good (I will unfortunately not have time to
look at it carefully before some time).

I guess you know about reddit, anyway there is a thread about your
library there: http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/g3xp1/craftwerk_a_highlevel_and_easy_to_use_graphics/

Could you please as suggest one comment include some screenshots (even
better with some code next to them) on the homepage?

Thanks for making the code available on both github and hackage!
Thu