If GNUplot can plot a million points or a 4096^2 image with a delay < 1s and no memory disaster then that would be fast enough for me.
I wish there was a better solution Karl On 04/03/2013, at 2:04 AM, Henning Glawe wrote: > On Sun, Mar 03, 2013 at 10:04:45PM +1100, Karl Glazebrook wrote: >> I don't know how 'modern' PLplot is. The documentation still talks about >> Tektronix terminals! >> >> I did some googling, DISLIN seemed the closest but is only semi-frree. >> >> In astronomy people really only use pgplot at the c/f77 level. (At a higher >> level they use language specific graphics, e.g. IDL, IRAF, Python, sm (!), >> gnuplot, MMA). >> >> What about other scientific fields? What do people you know use? > > In my field (computational quantum physics/chemistry), computation and > visualization are usually treated separately. Typically, the actual > numerical simulations are very heavy (taking CPU-days or even CPU-weeks on > current HPC-Clusters). > The visualization is performed in a separate step, where different "classes" > of tools are employed: > * Special purpuse tools for molecule/crystal visualization, which show: > - crystal structures > - densities either on cutting planes or as equipotential surfaces > Tools belonging to this class are: > - xcrysden http://www.xcrysden.org/ > - v-sim http://www-drfmc.cea.fr/L_Sim/V_Sim/index.en.html > * General-purpose plotting tools with a focus on 2D-visualization: > - gnuplot http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/ > - grace http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/ > * General-purpose plotting tools with more focus on 3D-visualization: > - OpenDX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_OpenDX > (Official website seems to be down) > Learning curve is quite steep, interface is a bit awkward to use (for > modern standards) > - paraview http://www.paraview.org/ > Easier to use than OpenDX; very powerful visualization tool, integrated > python scripting support for > - sources (data generation) > - filters (data processing) > - general-purpose macros > >> Looks dismal. Perhaps the moral is people who put significant effort in to >> visuals tend to go commercial? > > I don't think so. You can get quite good results out of free > visualization tools, altough sometimes you may have to tweak the settings a > bit. One very good example for this is gnuplot; the default settings have not > changed much in the past 20 years (think backwards compatibility), but with > some modifications in your gnuplot scripts, plots may look a lot more > attractive. This is one of the websites showing how to do this: > http://www.gnuplotting.org > > For paraview, there are some good examples in the image gallery: > http://www.paraview.org/paraview/project/imagegallery.php > > > Maybe we have to go back to the question what _kind_ of visualization support > we need to have available directly within PDL. > > In my opinion, a very simple plotting interface used mainly for > debugging/development is enough. > For anything beyond this, there are really good plotting tools available also > as free software, we just need to be able to export data in a format readable > by them. > > -- > c u > henning _______________________________________________ Perldl mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.jach.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/perldl
