Re: gnuplot

[Eric S Fraga <ucecesf@ucl.ac.uk>]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2005 at 12:20:52AM -0400, kamaraju kusumanchi wrote:
> Igor Khavkine wrote:
> >So I'd like to know what are the biggest complaints that people have
> >about gnuplot? 
> For starters
> 1) It cannot plot across rows. It can plot only across columns
> 2) Almost all the data processing has to be done using some outside 
> program. It would be nice if it has more inherent data processing 
> capabilities.

Both of these are related. I don't find the lack of data processing a
problem. This approach fits in very well with the Unix philosophy of small
(-ish) targetted tools. I use gnuplot all the time and it's always the last
step in a sequence of steps which include other tools to handle the data
processing (and re-formatting if required to address point 1). I use gnuplot
primarily for journal etc publications and the power of customization and
the quality of the output are close to unrivalled.

There are plenty of data processing tools available. R is one example.
Octave, with the various contributed packages, is obviously another and it
interfaces to gnuplot as well.

> 3) Not much 3D support - Stream lines cannot be drawn, vector plots 
> cannot be drawn.

This is indeed one short-coming of gnuplot.

cheers,
eric

-- 
 Eric S Fraga, Dept Chemical Engineering, UCL, e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk
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