if you’re writing your own API, I would recommend picking something very low level and established as a backend, otherwise limitations and thus hacky solutions will ruin it quickly. i’d say, there are several bottlenecks to consider before diving into any of options:

• do you need latex?
• how large of datasets are you planning to plot?
• for 3d, do you need raytraced volume rendering, or will meshes be enough?

based on those, i’d recommend the following.

1. drop c/c++ – it’s gonna be too much effort for too little advantage. there are no well-established and properly maintained plotting packages in c/c++ (implot comes close, but is very limited and often slow).
2. if you need to run the library in a browser (webapp), look into d3js for frontend (i.e. building the axes, putting ticks etc), and a flask-based python server for backend (to actually read the data and produce the heaviest plots). if you need latex, just use katex on the frontend.
3. for heavy data vis, look into python dask and datashader libraries.
4. for 3d, there is really no good solution, but vtk is close. volume rendering though would be tough, i would recommend looking into ospray or other stuff like that.

let me know if you need any more details on any of the mentioned things.

i didn’t mean purely mathematically. but from the physics standpoint. in other words, if you provide enough dark energy and shape it into a specific configuration, it will generate space-time where time travel is possible in practice.

traveling back in time is not mathematically disallowed by the general relativity.

in fact there is a lot of work done on the topic, and lots of potential scenarios proposed (which usually involve describing the space-time warped into weird 4D shapes). what GR does tell you is what kind of matter/energy would produce such spaces (since in GR these two are intertwined), and that’s kind of where common sense works again: most proposed geometries do require either negative energy densities or mathematical singularities (which to be fair are not impossible, but we kinda never seen that, aside from dark energy).

on the other hand – faster-than-light travel is also possible – albeit with similar constraints.

re: Intel

i have not been able to properly set things up on nix. i need oneapi Blender support, SYCL etc. unfortunately, i can’t spend several days trying figure it out on my own.

re: kwin

again, my experience was mixed. some apps sort of worked out of the box, others had issues with detecting pressure sensitivity or palm rejection.

re: wsl

I don’t need a container. when on Nix, i use devshells. what i was saying is that all the linux tools i ever need are easily available on windows.

re: ppt

again, i tried. it sort of works for older versions. but even then once i started importing media, it would crash. when I’m traveling and need to show slides, i simply can’t afford to just debug all night why the video won’t show properly.

for the record: i do have a linux laptop (fw16, with nixos), i just need to keep another windows one for very specific tasks.

I can give you reasons I have for not installing Linux on one of my laptops:

• Intel graphics support, or the absence of it;

• decent touchscreen support (Windows Ink);

• WSL which I use with NixOS, and it does simplify most of my dev needs;

• unfortunately, Adobe apps which I still heavily rely on (I’d wish I had an alternative),

• PowerPoint (again, I’d wish I had an alternative).

If you want to comment: "oh but have you tried Affinity, Pixie, Only Office, Libre Impress, reveal.js, {enter your fav presentation/photo editing tool} – yes I have, and no, unfortunately, it’s not even close. Also, to be clear, I’ve never paid, and never will for the Windows/Adobe products.