About¶

What is GSP?¶

GSP (Graphics Server Protocol) is a backend-agnostic Python library for describing and rendering 2D and 3D scientific visualizations. It defines a single declarative scene model — canvas, viewports, cameras, visuals, transforms, geometry, materials — and dispatches that scene to one of several interchangeable rendering backends at runtime. The same scene description can run against the Matplotlib reference renderer, the network renderer, and optional Datoviz surfaces when the matching legacy wrapper or v0.4 capability-gated adapter is available. Backend selection is a one-line change; the scene description is invariant.

Motivation¶

Scientific visualization in Python has historically coupled the scene API to the renderer. Matplotlib, Datoviz, VisPy, Plotly, and Bokeh each ship their own scene model and their own rendering pipeline as an indivisible unit. Switching backends means rewriting visualization code. Remote and headless rendering adds a third axis of fragmentation: it is typically implemented as a separate stack with its own protocol, disconnected from local rendering. GSP treats the scene as the invariant and the renderer as the variable. The full problem statement and design rationale are in the Whitepaper.

Key Features¶

Unified declarative scene model across all backends (Canvas, Viewport, Camera, eight visual primitives, TransformChain)
Three first-party renderer surfaces: Matplotlib, optional Datoviz support, and a network renderer
Runtime selection for the legacy renderer stack: matplotlib, datoviz-v03, or network
Pydantic v2 serialization layer (gsp_pydantic) for JSON export and base64-encoded buffer transport
Network rendering over Flask: client serializes the scene, server renders and returns a PNG
Python 3.13+ with strict mypy compliance throughout

Backends¶

Backend	Type	Package	Use case
Matplotlib	CPU rasterization	`gsp_matplotlib`	Publication figures, portable environments
Datoviz	GPU (Vulkan)	`gsp_datoviz`	Optional legacy wrapper support and capability-gated v0.4 adapter work
Network	Remote / Flask	`gsp_network`	Headless servers, HPC clusters, cloud notebooks

Backend names do not imply feature parity. Matplotlib is the reference implementation. Datoviz v0.4 support is advertised per capability, while datoviz-v03 identifies the separate legacy renderer path. See the canonical specification index for backend contracts.

Project Status¶

GSP is a research prototype at version 0.1.0. It has known bugs, an active TODO list, and no published PyPI release. The Matplotlib reference path and protocol examples are the current release-readiness baseline; optional Datoviz and network paths have narrower setup requirements. The API may change before a stable release and is not recommended for production use at this stage.

Author & Organization¶

GSP is developed under the vispy GitHub organization. The source repository is at github.com/vispy/GSP_API.

License¶

Contributing¶

Bug reports, feature requests, and pull requests are welcome on the GitHub repository. Please open an issue before submitting a large PR to align on scope and design.