Re: text-only plots

[Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com>]

Hi Thiery,

On Mon, Dec 09, 2013 at 10:48:22PM +0000, Thierry Banel wrote:
> Ivan Andrus <darthandrus <at> gmail.com> writes:
> > On Dec 9, 2013, at 5:19 AM, Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+linux <at> gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > Technically speaking, it is not exported as a table since you put it as
> > > part of example block.  However a quick test tells me, html export will
> > > work fine (screenshot attached).  However LaTeX export is an entirely
> > > different story.  Unicode support in normal pdflatex is quite
> > > non-trivial.  If you use XeLaTeX, I think you could get it to work with
> > > some appropriate choice of fonts.  I tried libertine and dejavu without
> > > any luck.
> > 
> > Would it be possible to export it to \rule when using LaTeX?  It
> > wouldn't be text then and you couldn't copy it, but it should work
> > with any TeX engine regardless of fonts etc.  Just a thought.
> 
> Right, Suvayu, Unicodes are not universally supported.
> So, what about coming back to basics ?
> Just Ascii like that:

 [...chomp...chomp...chomp...]

> We remove Unicodes until someone comes with an idea.
> 
> Ivan, the LaTex \rule might be a (pretty) solution for the LaTex exporter.
> But then we should also take care of all past and future exporters...

Firstly, I think the unicode bit is a terrific improvement; specially
the two options: grid and continuous.  I think there are two distinct
problems here: the plot as shown in org, and export.  We should not
confuse the two.

I will suggest for the moment having the plotting bits is enough.  HTML
export works, plain text export sort of works[1].  As you see, getting
it right for all (most) exporters is non-trivial, so I would say no need
for worrying about supporting past exporters.

Handling this needs some conditional behaviour: plain text -> backend,
or unicode -> backend.  You could use a standardised column title to
selectively choose/ignore columns.  So ASCII export would ignore unicode
columns.  LaTeX export would replace the chars with appropriate symbols
(e.g. \rule, as suggested by Ivan).  Texinfo and markdown supports
unicode, so that should be fine (like HTML).

When we have something that is acceptable, you can publish the exporter
code and the plotting code as part of the same module, say
org-ascii-plot.el (or something along those lines).  Which could then go
in contrib.

WDYT?

Footnotes:

[1] Sort-of, because it "lies" by including unicode chars even if you
    export to ASCII only.


-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.