Jovan - To expand on what Craig said, I'd say your best option depends on where you expect your usage to go. Both Gnuplot and Prima should be relatively painless to install and start using. I am the Prima guy, so bear that in mind for what follows. Craig may want to clarify some bits here.
Go with Gnuplot if you are getting started creating figures for research and this could grow into a full-fledged research project. Gnuplot supports more output file types, and has much more sophisticated figure capabilities. I'm pretty sure that Gnuplot supports transparency, for example, and Prima does not. This is not to say that Prima can't produce publication-quality figures: if you are simply creating lines with different line patterns---which are the vast majority of my figures---or heat maps that don't require a scale bar (it's coming, but not yet ready), then Prima should work just fine. I hate to say it, because I want people using Prima, but if you need something for high-quality figures, your best bet is to go with Gnuplot. Go with Prima if you are not so focused on producing static figures and can see yourself wanting to interact with the display of the data. PDL::Graphics::Prima is a GUI widget underneath, so adding interaction to your plots are very easy once you know the basics of the Prima GUI toolkit. (Yes, there's a learning curve, no it's not steep.) This is not to say that Gnuplot doesn't support interactive data analysis. Craig has worked very hard to provide as much user interaction with Gnuplot as he could. But at the end of the day, Gnuplot is a stand-alone plotting library, not a GUI toolkit. If you see yourself wanting nontrivial programmable interaction, you're likely to get better mileage if you go with Prima. I don't mention PLplot here because Chris has expressed trouble trying to get it working on Windows. I used to use PLplot, but I don't like how it produces heat maps and interaction with GUI toolkits (like Gtk2) were monumental efforts. All of these concerns led me to write PDL::Graphics::Prima. As for PGPLOT, I don't think it's endorsed by anybody anymore. Hope that helps! David On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 6:23 PM, Craig DeForest <[email protected]>wrote: > "Best" is a matter of opinion. I like gnuplot a lot, and several kind > folks donated a Hell of a lot of time to iron out the IPC gotchas and make > it work under Windows. I'd like to hear your experience to see if it > really does work "in the wild". > > > > On Aug 7, 2013, at 4:08 PM, Jovan Trujillo <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Hello all, > > > > I've been wanted to use more of PDL for a while now, but the machines at > work run on Windows XP. What is the best way to get plots working on a > Windows machine? Gnuplot? > > > > Thanks, > > Jovan > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 > -- "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." -- Brian Kernighan
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