That is a very nice summary.  Someone needs to cut-n-paste into the Book...

(mobile)


On Aug 8, 2013, at 6:19 AM, David Mertens <[email protected]> wrote:

> 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
> > _______________________________________________
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> > [email protected]
> > http://mailman.jach.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/perldl
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
>  "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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