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[edit] Introduction

I will place the questions that I have as I am learning about lib2geom on this page of the Inkscape Wiki. Over the course of time I will patiently pester the developers of the library for detailed answers to these questions. As I recieve these answers I will post them here for others. (2006-09-01)

See also the page Working with 2geom FAQ for more practical Q/A.

[edit] Questions

What is lib2geom?

lib2geom was initially a library developed for Inkscape but will provide a robust computational geometry framework for any application. It is not a rendering library, instead concentrating on high level algorithms such as computing arc length. (from http://lib2geom.sourceforge.net)

How does lib2geom represent the coordinates of geometries?

What are the basic geometry types defined in lib2geom, and where can I find the source code for those definitions?

How do I access the source code for lib2geom?

There is a Subversion or SVN repository for the library at lib2geom SVN Address: https://lib2geom.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/lib2geom/lib2geom/trunk . You can browse the contents of the repository with your web browser, but you will need a Subversion client like TortoiseSVN or RapidSVN to download its contents.

Requirements

  • Cairo :
http://cairographics.org
  • cmake (building system) to compile lib2geom
http://www.cmake.org/


Optionnal

  • The gnu libgsl.
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gsl/
If you install from your distribution, don't forget libgsl*-dev
It's used for test only.
  • BLAS (Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms):
http://www.netlib.org/blas/

How do I compile lib2geom from svn?

On Unix :

cmake .
make
make install

On MS-windows :

cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" .

[edit] Configuring lib2geom building on Windows

In the lib2geom dir, do:

 cmake -i

Now you can change the options with which lib2geom is built. Set BOOST_PYTHON_LIBRARY to for example: "c:/devlibs/python/libs/libpython25.a"