Hi All- Nice to see the discussion of the issue active again. I think it is critical to the growth and success of PDL that there be some plotting capability that is always "in" PDL in that it builds and operates correctly on all the PDL platforms: win32, MacOSX, linux/unix/bsd/..
Here is a summary of my experiences with the various ones over the years: PGPLOT: tried and true but not open source. It was always a good default (especially if I could build the RGB color patched version). Interactive drivers for win32 are a bit sketchy and for the latest cygwin on win7, the xwin driver now hangs which makes it unusable for me now. PLplot: looked to be a possible replacement for PGPLOT but I've never successfully built it on cygwin nor been able to try the PDL bindings. I hope to give it a try with the current cygwin to see if things are better. TriD: good basic 3D visualization but needs better control of the visualization parameters (e.g., turn axes on/off, labels on/off,...). I have had this on my todo list for quite some time but at a lower priority to getting PDL working cross-platform---especially with a goal of increasing the user base on win32. Gnuplot: the initial bindings by Dima and Craig work ok for line plots on cygwin/win7 and SPP on win7. Unfortunately, I was completely unable to display an image in my first attempts. If the robustness on PC platforms were improved with some usability improvements resulting from actual user feedback, I think this option has the best chance at the publication quality graphics and ok for use interactively. PDL::Graphics::Prima: this is a fast, interactive drawing module with much potential. It has the advantage of speed, portability, an associated GUI toolkit which could be used to embed graphics or design user interfaces for PDL apps. I think with a few iterations of PDL::Graphics::Prima::Simple would become a friendly, available everywhere PDL is, baseline graphics and GUI option for PDL. I like the Prima interactive much better than Gnuplot and with the capability of supporting OpenGL in Prima (already, thanks Dmitry!) we should be able to support TriD graphics and even something like buffer graphics drivers for PGPLOT, PLplot, and Gnuplot. Then there are the excellent ideas from Tim regarding some type of workbook support. That would tie in nicely to the opengl-unified structure in that any or all of the graphics could be output as a memory buffer (a.k.a., a piddle and used for display or imaging). I think HTML5 has support for OpenGL type graphics. All very cool! Need more 'round tuits'... --Chris On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 2:54 AM, Matthew Kenworthy <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > Based on the past few days of posts, I'd like to open up a thorny issue: > > Do we have a plotting package that installs smoothly across all three major > platforms? > > I've been playing with python and matplotlib for a couple of months now, and > although the OO interface is a royal pain, at least I know I can send a > script to students/collaborators and it will just *work* for them. > > I've seen that PLplot is throwing up errors for some people, and now we have > Gnuplot grumbling as well. PGPLOT is still difficult to install and not > interactive-friendly.... > > If we want more PDL adopters, we should pick a plotting system and put all > our energies in making that work flawlessly for a couple of years, so that > interested people don't get discouraged. > > I also have a selfish reason - if we choose something other than PGPLOT, it > means a rewrite of the PDL Book, and I don't want to make the investment of > time if we suddenly decide that 'oops, $PLOTTING_SYSTEM isn't working > anymore/new shiny thing is the way to go'. > > I'd be happy to get any plotting package working for the SciPDL Mac binary > working, if we get a general consensus here. > > Matt > > > -- > Matthew Kenworthy / Assistant Professor / Leiden Observatory > Niels Bohrweg 2 (#463) / P.O. Box 9513 / 2300 RA Leiden / NL > > _______________________________________________ > Perldl mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.jach.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/perldl > _______________________________________________ Perldl mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.jach.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/perldl
