[alma-sw-ssr] graphic formats

[Peter Schilke <schilke@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de>]

At present, programs like xv and ImageMagick seem to be able to do fits,
but without colors, but that may change.  That as an aside.

I thought it would be important to have all kind of output formats, in
particular one should have postscript or pdf (capable of vector
graphics) and a bitmap format, but I'd like to see as many choices as
possible.  The idea of course would not be to write as many graphic
drivers as output formats, but to let an existing program (such as
convert) do the conversion - but quietly, and without the user knowing
about it, unless he/she chooses to read the manual.

I can deal with these things (and most if not all of you can too), and
occasionally I have to hop through quite a few programs until I get what
I want, but I know very many people who are at sea with all this.  We
should keep in mind that we have to design the thing not for the black
belt user, but for Joe Sixpack, as Jeff would call him.  It should
always be possible to bypass these things, but the default should be
something that works out of the box as much as possible, with reasonable
defaults.

In the end this is implementors choice, but many good things are out
there, so why to try to reuse them?

    Peter

--
Dr. Peter Schilke                      Max-Planck-Institut f"ur Radioastronomie
Auf dem H"ugel 69                      D-53121 Bonn                     Germany
Tel.   49-228-525-392       mobile: 49-160-7014309        FAX    49-228-525-435
mailto:schilke@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de     http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/staff/schilke