[Haskell-cafe] ANN: diagrams-0.6

[Brent Yorgey]

I am pleased to announce the release of version 0.6 of diagrams [1], a
full-featured framework and embedded domain-specific language for
declarative drawing. Check out the gallery [2] for examples of what it
can do! [3,4]

[1] http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams  
[2] http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/gallery.html  
[3] http://mathlesstraveled.com/2012/11/05/more-factorization-diagrams/  
[4] http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/gallery/PythagoreanTree.html  

Highlights of this release include:

-   Diagrams now comes with a native-Haskell SVG backend [5] by default.
    If you were holding off on trying diagrams because you couldn't
    install cairo, you no longer have an excuse!

-   Proper support for subdiagrams: previous versions of diagrams-core
    had a mechanism for associating names with a pair of a location and
    an envelope. Now, names are associated with actual subdiagrams
    (including their location and envelope, along with all the other
    information stored by a diagram). This enables cool techniques like
    constructing a diagram in order to position its subelements and then
    taking it apart again, or constructing animations via keyframing.

-   Traces: in addition to an envelope, each diagram now stores a
    "trace", which is like an embedded raytracer: given any ray
    (represented by a base point and a vector), the trace computes the
    closest point of intersection with the diagram along the ray. This
    is useful for determining points on the boundary of a diagram, e.g.
    when drawing arrows between diagrams.

-   The core data structure underlying diagrams has been completely
    refactored and split out into its own separate package, dual-tree
    [6].

-   Support for GHC 7.6.

-   Many more new features, bug fixes, and improvements! See the release
    notes [7] for complete details, and the diagrams wiki [8] for help
    migrating from 0.5 to 0.6.

[5] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/diagrams%2Dsvg  
[6] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/dual%2Dtree  
[7] http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/releases.html  

Try it out
----------

For the truly impatient:

    cabal install diagrams

Diagrams is supported under GHC 7.0 through 7.6, with the exception that
the cairo and gtk backends do not build under GHC 7.0 (but the SVG
backend does), and the gtk backend does not build under GHC 7.6.

To get started with diagrams, read the quick tutorial [9], which will
introduce you to the fundamentals of the framework.

For those who are less impatient and want to really dig in and use the
power features, read the user manual [10].

[8] http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Diagrams/Migrate0.6  
[9] http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/tutorial/DiagramsTutorial.html  
[10] http://projects.haskell.org/manual/diagrams-manual.html  

Get involved
------------

Subscribe to the project mailing list [11], and/or come hang out in the
#diagrams IRC channel on freenode.org for help and discussion. Make some
diagrams. Fix some bugs [12]. Submit your cool examples for inclusion in
the gallery [13] or your cool code for inclusion in the diagrams-contrib
[14] package!

[11] http://groups.google.com/group/diagrams-discuss  
[12] http://github.com/diagrams/  
[13] http://projects.haskell.org/diagrams/gallery.html  
[14] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/diagrams%2Dcontrib

Happy diagramming!

Brought to you by the diagrams team:

-   Michael Sloan
-   Ryan Yates
-   Brent Yorgey

with contributions from:

-   Sam Griffin
-   Niklas Haas
-   Peter Hall
-   Claude Heiland-Allen
-   Deepak Jois
-   John Lato
-   Felipe Lessa
-   Chris Mears
-   Ian Ross
-   Vilhelm Sjöberg
-   Jim Snavely
-   Luite Stegeman
-   Kanchalai Suveepattananont
-   Michael Thompson
-   Scott Walck