Which Image Generation Library?

ruby-talk
1

I need to create a small program that generates images and "animations"
(i can cheat on the animation) of Petri nets. Something like the
wikipedia page's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petri_net) examples, but
automatically generated based on simple input.

I'm thinking about doing this in Ruby (with Gnome 2) but don't know what
image generation/manipulation tool would be best to use or if i should
go with something else. Does someone have a suggestion? Ideally
something with some good documentation. It doesn't have to be
sophisticated, just enough to algorithmically generate pictures. I'm
planning on using Gnome 2 as well, if this makes a difference.

Thanks in advance!

···

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2

Cairo can make nice figures and there are Ruby bindings. The bindings have little (no?) documentation, but Cairo itself is very well documented and there are good docs for the Python bindings which are almost identical.

I'd post links, but Google is your friend really.

Alex Gutteridge

Bioinformatics Center
Kyoto University

···

On 5 Oct 2007, at 10:51, Winter Ayars wrote:

I need to create a small program that generates images and "animations"
(i can cheat on the animation) of Petri nets. Something like the
wikipedia page's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petri_net) examples, but
automatically generated based on simple input.

I'm thinking about doing this in Ruby (with Gnome 2) but don't know what
image generation/manipulation tool would be best to use or if i should
go with something else. Does someone have a suggestion? Ideally
something with some good documentation. It doesn't have to be
sophisticated, just enough to algorithmically generate pictures. I'm
planning on using Gnome 2 as well, if this makes a difference.

3

Winter Ayars wrote:

I need to create a small program that generates images and "animations"
(i can cheat on the animation) of Petri nets. Something like the
wikipedia page's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petri_net) examples, but
automatically generated based on simple input.

I'm thinking about doing this in Ruby (with Gnome 2) but don't know what
image generation/manipulation tool would be best to use or if i should
go with something else. Does someone have a suggestion? Ideally
something with some good documentation. It doesn't have to be
sophisticated, just enough to algorithmically generate pictures. I'm
planning on using Gnome 2 as well, if this makes a difference.

Thanks in advance!
  

Look at Graphviz. It may do exactly what you want, at least if you aren't too picky about layout and graphic conventions.

http://graphviz.org/

4

Alex Gutteridge wrote:

···

On 5 Oct 2007, at 10:51, Winter Ayars wrote:

I need to create a small program that generates images and "animations"
(i can cheat on the animation) of Petri nets. Something like the
wikipedia page's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petri_net) examples, but
automatically generated based on simple input.

I'm thinking about doing this in Ruby (with Gnome 2) but don't know what
image generation/manipulation tool would be best to use or if i should
go with something else. Does someone have a suggestion? Ideally
something with some good documentation. It doesn't have to be
sophisticated, just enough to algorithmically generate pictures. I'm
planning on using Gnome 2 as well, if this makes a difference.

Cairo can make nice figures and there are Ruby bindings. The bindings have little (no?) documentation, but Cairo itself is very well documented and there are good docs for the Python bindings which are almost identical.

I'd post links, but Google is your friend really.

Alex Gutteridge

Bioinformatics Center
Kyoto University

I've seen quite a few Petri net animations on the web -- perhaps you could grab one of those and just do the Ruby scripting.

5

You could do it with RMagick, it is the Ruby lib for ImageMagick. It can handle vector art and raster art. It has quite good documentation too. Not sure about animation or interactivity, but you could do that using one of the game oriented libs like Gosu or Ruby/SDL or RubyGame.

In the end though, Javascript might be a lot easier to just program an animation, you could then simply use any HTML view for display (web browser). That said, you might look into Scriptaculous or Prototype, the Ruby bound Javascript libraries that are commonly used in Ruby on Rails for eyecandy.

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On Oct 4, 2007, at 10:47 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

Alex Gutteridge wrote:

On 5 Oct 2007, at 10:51, Winter Ayars wrote:

I need to create a small program that generates images and "animations"
(i can cheat on the animation) of Petri nets. Something like the
wikipedia page's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petri_net) examples, but
automatically generated based on simple input.

I'm thinking about doing this in Ruby (with Gnome 2) but don't know what
image generation/manipulation tool would be best to use or if i should
go with something else. Does someone have a suggestion? Ideally
something with some good documentation. It doesn't have to be
sophisticated, just enough to algorithmically generate pictures. I'm
planning on using Gnome 2 as well, if this makes a difference.

Cairo can make nice figures and there are Ruby bindings. The bindings have little (no?) documentation, but Cairo itself is very well documented and there are good docs for the Python bindings which are almost identical.
I'd post links, but Google is your friend really.
Alex Gutteridge
Bioinformatics Center
Kyoto University

I've seen quite a few Petri net animations on the web -- perhaps you could grab one of those and just do the Ruby scripting.

6

John Joyce wrote:

In the end though, Javascript might be a lot easier...

I was thinking about Javascript, although i sort of wanted to stay away
from that. Maybe i should reconsider...

Anyway, thanks for the advice everyone. I'll look into these things.

···

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