Re: mac grapher for linux
I'm forwarding this to the d-science list, where this stuff is often discussed.
On 13/05/2008, Jimmy Wu <jimmywu013+debian@gmail.com> wrote:
> Has anyone here ever used the "Grapher" application that all Macs come with?
> It is a very nice piece of software with support for 3D and many types
> of equations, and it's very useful for math/science purposes. Is
> there something comparable for Debian or Linux in general? I was
> looking on Google but couldn't find any convincing replacements. Most
> of the stuff I see is very rudimentary 2D graphers that only allow a
> very limited amount (like 3) equations. I saw labplot, but I didn't
> try that because I don't want all the KDE dependencies (which, as an
> xfce user, means a lot of extra packages).
> I also gnuplot, which seems to be decent except it doesn't have the
> nice friendly GUI of mac's grapher. Neither of these are great as
> substitutes, but I haven't found anything better.
>
> So basically, I was wondering if anyone had any ideas before I go
> invest the time into learning how to use gnuplot?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> --
> Jimmy Wu
> Registered Linux User #454138
> () ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
> /\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments
I use VTK myself, which is certainly not exactly friendly as it
requires programming a bit, but it produces very high-quality
graphics. I mostly use it with its Octave frontend, Octaviz. If you're
comfortable with Octave-like (Matlab-like) syntax, you should
definitely give it a try.
gnuplot is very widespread and many people swear by it. Gnuplot's 2d
plotting is quite good, but its 3d graphs look ugly compared to the
VTK output. It certainly seems worthwhile to invest some time to learn
about Gnuplot.
I know we have more options, but I can't remember what they are.
There's a pretty big graphics package that I think had to do with KDE.
I seem to recall the maintainer had a female name, but it looks like
it's not Miriam Ruiz like usual.
- Jordi G. H.
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