Thanks for the links. Of those, I'd only ever heard of MatLab.

For the type of plotting I'm interested in, these highly sophistacated products are overkill. With sophistication, comes complexity and learning curve. were they free products, they might be worth considering, but this isn't important enough to sepnd money on. I already know how to produce the types of plot I am interested in using the simple API of GD. It does all I need.

The only addition I am looking for is the ability to watch the plots evolve in real-time, rather than only seeing a static image of the final result. To this end, the browser and Canvas tag can provide this ability, and has a sufficiently simple api that the learning curve is minimal.

The final parts of the task, and that I was asking about, are:

  1. Avoiding the need for a webserver.

    This is fairly easily achieved by running a simplified server in a thread, that can server to the browser, but without the need to be able to service more than one concurrent client. And without imposing the stateless nature of http on the interactions.

  2. Avoiding the need to write code in another language (Javascript).

    I intend to achieve this by proxying the Canvas API within a perl object that talk to the browser via the server-in-a-thread.

I'm still working out how to do handle push within the (minimal & standardised) Javascript that will be served along with the HTML; and getting to grips with ajax for the browser interactions, but it just takes time.

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

In reply to Re^2: The browser as a (simple) window manager. (Updated) by BrowserUk
in thread The browser as a (simple) window manager. (Updated) by BrowserUk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.