contour labelling [was "Re: [R] image ()"]

[Ross Ihaka]

Brian D Ripley writes:

	Interactive rotation of perspective plots would be a great
	boon, as would shading options for perspective plots, including
	contouring on such plots.

I am envisioning a division into static and dynamic plots.  The static
version will concentrate on rendering as nice a picture as possible -
anti-aliasing (if supported) arbitrary text rotation etc, whereas the
dynamic version will shoot for speed.  It would be possible to use
direct manipulation in a dynamic plot of a wire-frame to select a
viewing direction and then have a nicely rendered version of the
surface produced in a separate (static) plot.

This separation is motivated by the fact that there will soon be some
rather nice rendering tools available for Unix/Linux (anti-aliasing
built-in), but their performance will be limited.  One day we will all
have OpenGL hardware acceleration and then we can have just one
graphics system (maybe).

Shading is possible with the current version of "persp", but you
have to compute the shades yourself :-(.  An automated version of this
is on my list, as is contouring on (and under) the rendered surface
and draping.

Of course, as always, limited resources may well curtail what we can
produce.  I giving fairly high priority to being able to draw maps, as
that is something I personally will need for teaching.

	Ross
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