[arch-general] Enable FLTK Octave backend?

[Stefano Avallone]

Hi,

I read in the Octave documentation [1] that a newer (than gnuplot) plotting 
capability is provided by the FLTK/OpenGL backend. This new backend is not 
available in the current octave arch package, because the fltk library is 
required to be installed at build time.

I read that the FLTK backend is rather faster (for 3d plots) than the gnuplot 
backend, and also some options (e.g., Postscript level 3 or pdflatex outputs 
of the print command) are only available with the new backend.

I installed fltk from extra and recompiled octave. The new backend seems to 
work fine and it is also enables to zoom (or rotate) and pan the current plot.

I don't know if the addition of the FLTK backend has been discussed in the 
past and abandoned for some reasons, but I see no issues in including it, 
since the default backend seems to still be gnuplot. So, adding the support 
for the FLTK backend would be as simple as putting fltk in makedepends and 
optdepends.

Should I open a bug to track this feature request?

regards,
Stefano


[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Introduction-to-
Plotting.html#Introduction-to-Plotting