On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 12:03 PM, Doug Hunt <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Karl: I still maintain that PLplot is a good, modern plotting package > that runs on all required platforms. It is well maintained and has a nice > build system. It also has interactive capabilities which I don't know much > about.
I would like to see PLplot available. The sticking point for me is that there is no easy way to build it on all the stock PDL supported platforms: unix/linux/cygwin, macosx, and windows. They have a new build system based on cmake that they have been transitioning too. Looks like things are stabilizing but getting it to build out of the box is a problem. There is limited documentation and tracking down problems is not straightforward without some cmake knowledge, familiarity with the PLplot specifics, and time to investigate. Building this on cygwin has long been a goal of mine. I tried last weekend and got stuck. This time I've opened a ticket to report the issue going forward. > I have not supported Windows and Mac with PDL::Graphics::PLplot because I > don't have the time and access to required machines. > > I think others who have time/machines could do this without much effort. Story our our lives. :-) > I think PLplot could be brought up to speed with minor enhancements to > PDL::Graphics::PLplot, which I don't necessarily have time to do. > > Regards, > Doug > > [email protected] > Software Engineer > UCAR - COSMIC, Tel. (303) 497-2611 > > On Tue, 5 Mar 2013, Karl Glazebrook wrote: > >> 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 _______________________________________________ Perldl mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.jach.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/perldl
