Which Image Generation Library?

[Winter Ayars]

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!

 

[Alex Gutteridge]

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

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

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.

 

[John Joyce]

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.

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.

 

[Winter Ayars]

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.

 

[William Rutiser]

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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphviz

http://graphviz.org/