:-) gnuplot.  But I will be glad to use ::Simple so folks can compare.  Stand 
by - traveling atm.

(Mobile)


On Mar 7, 2013, at 2:28 AM, Karl Glazebrook <[email protected]> wrote:

> Which package did you use for the benchmark plot? :-)
> 
> - Karl
> 
> 
> On 05/03/2013, at 3:23 PM, Craig DeForest <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> Gnuplot doesn't really shine for speed, or even for being particularly 
>> elegant - though I tried to encapsulate and regularize the horror.  To be 
>> honest, if you're going for speed Prima is a better bet, and in the long run 
>> its prospects are pretty darned good.  That's why we need to make sure it's 
>> present and advertised in the next few releases, IMHO.
>> 
>> On the other hand, Gnuplot isn't horribly slow either.  Here are some Q&D 
>> benchmarks on my c. 2011 macbook with the fast-pipe patch to gnuplot 4.6.  I 
>> ran the below subroutine in a loop to collect the data.  The green 
>> crosshairs is the performance at a million points (about 2.5 sec); the blue 
>> crosshairs is the performance at 1 sec (380,000 points).
>> 
>> sub plot_n_points {
>>      my $n = shift;
>>      use Time::HiRes q/time/;
>>      $x = random($n); $y = random($n);
>>      $w=gpwin(x11);
>>      $t0 = time;
>>      $w->plot(with=>'dots',$x,$y);
>>      $t1 = time;
>>      return $t1-$t0;
>> }
>> 
>> <points-performance.png>
>> 
>> 
>> On Mar 4, 2013, at 7:58 PM, Karl Glazebrook <[email protected]> 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
>>> 
>>> 
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