This would be a great addition to a great software

I use mlab.text to display labels read from a csv file using Mayavi, it would be great to be able to read labels from a random csv file for use with Paraview as well.

Creating labels in mayavi goes something like this

vtk_file = 'Labels'

d = VTKFileReader(name = 'Labels')

d.initialize ( vtk_file )
mayavi.add_source(d)

data = csv.reader(open('LabelFile.csv','r'),delimiter=',')

for subdata in data:
mlab.text(x = float(subdata[0]),y = float(subdata[1]), z = float(subdata[2]), text = subdata[3], width = 0.05, name = subdata[3], color=(0,0,0))

> [nooj's solution] is cumbersome, inelegant and bad for general workflow.

i couldn't agree more. my only MML experience, though, is with browser implementations, which commonly result in bad layout. i haven't heard of inkscape nor been shown a viable solution a la david's. if it's workable, this could definitely win me over.

@berk: The Qt-based solution has been released LGPL: http://qt.nokia.com/products/appdev/add-on-products/catalog/4/Widgets/qtmmlwidget/ . It takes MathML input but there are parsers (e.g., http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/itex2MML.html ) that take LaTeX-style equations and convert to MathML.

I think that this would be a great feature to have. It is not on our radar in the short term but we should keep discussing it here and hopefully this will align with a project that can fund it.
My vote would be for using Latex as the input. As David said, we need to be able to render the right glyphs and also lay out equations. Is there a self-contained (hopefully Qt-based) solution out there? Hopefully a library of small to moderate size?

Inkscape does it, why can't Paraview do it? Just check their plugin.

nooj: "I think the current solution of exporting a snapshot that is then cropped and imported into the latex document is a viable long-term solution."

That solution is cumbersome, inelegant and bad for general workflow.

I think this is a little too hard to implement. Latex allows some pretty crazy things that are far outside the scope of what paraview should be doing. It seems easy to throw in a few backslashes and dollar signs, but things get hard fast.

I think the current solution of exporting a snapshot that is then cropped and imported into the latex document is a viable long-term solution.

I guess that using some QT widget like this one may help: http://qt.nokia.com/products/appdev/add-on-products/catalog/4/Widgets/qtmmlwidget/

This is really 3 requests, all of which are important:
(1) Proper rendering of character glyphs outside the 7-bit ASCII range
(2) The ability to lay out and render mathematical equations
(3) Easy input of equations. LaTeX is really the best human interface for this, especially when compared to MathML which is easier for machines to process but much more tedious to type. Plus there are LaTeX->MathML converters out there (http://www.maths.nott.ac.uk/personal/drw/lm.html in JavaScript for instance).

Other markup or input option could be used. The important result would be to be able to have relatively sophisticated mathematical output in paraview text boxes..

Yes it's will be a very useful feature to have in ParaView