Using the Functional Graphics Tool with DrScheme

• The images can't be copied and pasted on some platforms.
• The images can't be saved out to a file and then loaded back in.

We have an alternative implementation of the functional graphics package for DrScheme that works around these problems. However, it incurs some disadvantages of its own:

• This version is a DrScheme "Tool" rather than "Library," which means it needs to be installed within the DrScheme directory (or folder) itself, rather than being loadable from anywhere. Therefore, to install the tool, you need to have write permission for the DrScheme installation. This is typically no problem on a personal machine, but on a shared facility may require intervention from a system administrator. Also, once installed, you have no choice about loading it (short of de-installing it), unlike a library which can be selectively used.
• Furthermore, this Tool version is less likely to work in DrScheme releases other than 100 than the Library version is.
• Finally, there is one slight incompatibility with the library version; instead of there being a name default-image-size, there are two procedures, (get-default-image-size) and (set-default-image-size! new-value).

If, having considered this tradeoff, you still consider it worth using the tool version, read on for a description of how to install the tool. Please note that once you have installed this tool, you should not use the fungraph.ss library, nor the concabs.ss library, since they duplicate the same functionality. Instead, the only one of our libraries you should still use is the oops.ss library, for the object-oriented programming system.

The easiest way to install the tool is to call this web page up in Help Desk (found in the Help menu of DrScheme), rather than in any other web browser, and then click on this link. This will cause Help Desk to offer to download and install the tool. If you agree to this, it will be automatically installed. Note that you have to restart DrScheme in order to have the functional graphics tool available for use. From now on, it will be automatically loaded every time you start DrScheme.

Alternatively, you can download the fungraph.plt package from any web browser and then manually run the setup-plt program (included in the DrScheme distribution) on that package in order to install the tool.