Re: Linux in Wired
Andy Kahn <kahn@zk3.dec.com> writes:
> have loads of features. however, i recently took the same data that
> i was pumping into gnuplot and plopped it into MS Excel, then made
> terrificly beautiful graphs (multi-column, bar, 3d, etc) with un-
> believable ease, and then sent them into a PowerPoint presentation.
Note that the Graphics are one of Excels strong points (especially
compared to other Windows based Spreadsheats). I agree fully that for
manipulating graphics a GUI interface is often well suited. Another
example is the ease with which you can make flow text around a picture
with a complicated contour in say PageMaker compared to how difficult
that is in TeX.
Note that even in one of its strong points Excel lets you down. F.i. Excel
supports logarihtmic graphs (hooray!) but they don't look "terrificly
beautiful" to me and you cannot plot say betwen 10^-5 and 10^-3
because the upper scale is arbitrarily limited to be 10 or above. It
seems that they only built it in to be able to display Bill Gates's
net worth against time :-).
> as much as i dislike Win95/NT/MS, this Excel->PowerPoint process
> was unbelievable and beats the heck out of grinding through gnuplot's
> numerous options.
However I do not see what the ease of creating bussiness graphics in
Excel has to with the merits of Powerpoint. One should check how the
linux bases spreadsheats like Applix, StarCalc and [insert other one
who's name I cannot remember right now] do in this respect?
As far as I know there aren't any GUI graphics programs for Linux. The
closest I know is gnuplot outputting to fig for xfig.
Jan
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