Hi there,
has anybody thought about a Grace backend, yet? I've recently been using Grace for some plotting and was really surprised how the version 5.99 has evolved over the past months. Not quite finished, but a huge step forward compared to the former versions of Grace.
For other tasks, I also have gotten to like the possibility of scripting plotting tasks in matplotlib. I have a number of scripts that I really don't want to dump completely.
Now my idea was: how about a matplotlib backend producing a .xgr file? Unlike the old .agr format, .xgr is now a XML based format describing a plot in Grace (without any scripting possibilities)
The structure of an .xgr file is not too different from the model that matplotlib uses, so the basic functionality should be rather simple to implement.
The main difficulty would probably be, that .xgr describes plots at a much higher level than the usual backends. The usual backend interface will therefore not work. I have no clear idea yet how the .xgr export could be incorporated in the easiest way.
B.t.w: I myself will most likely not be able to spend any serious time on this in the near future, so if anybody wants to look into it, I will not stand in the way.
Ciao,
Norbert