Re: ANN: Veusz 0.5 - a scientific plotting package
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:40:09 -0700, jdh2358 wrote: > I'll start by saying that I for one won't criticize you for rolling you > own plotting package rather than join forces with an existing project. > I've been accused of the same, on more than one occasion :-) But I'm also > aware of the problem that this creates -- the tyranny of choice. python is > so fun to code in that many developers are looking for a reason to find an > existant package inadequate so they have an excuse to write their own > replacement. Hence we have a proliferation of web-app frameworks, > plotting packages, array objects and so on. There is a lot of duplicated > effort in many arenas and it would be nice to collaborate more. True. It's sad that it's just more fun to go off and write something yourself, but it is fun :-) I'm afraid I'm not very good with using other people's codebases. > I read over your scipy list of problems that you found in matplotlib -- > some were helpful and some, as you note, have been long fixed. One > critique you might flesh out for me is the notion that matplotlib's object > model is baroque -- most of the developers feel the object model is fairly > solid. You weren't by chance, trying to use the procedural pylab (aka > matlab) interface, were you, since pylab itself is just a wrapper of the > OO matplotlib API? One area in the object model that we plan to change is > to make high level plot objects (scatter, error, histogram) etc, proper > objects, ala gnuplot. Right now they are methods that generate primitive > objects (lines, rectangles, text, etc). I thought I was using the object interface. It seemed strange to me that methods of the axes were used to plot data, draw legends, and so on... It seemed to make much more sense to have these as objects themselves. The main problem is that there's no object you can alter to change their appearance. I quite like the object system I've developed, where the external interface is completely based on building the object hierarchy and setting properties of the objects (plus there is a "functional" interface, but this is only used rarely for active operations, like fitting data). I wanted an interface where I could twiddle a bit, and change the axis from log to linear, or vertical to horizontal... I wasn't sure which variables in the matplotlib source I could touch and get away with in future releases :-) > Another area you identify as a problem with matplotlib is the need to > regenerate the entire graph when one property is changed. This is true in > one way and false in another. matplotlib does have a proper object model > -- eg, you can selectively change the facecolor of a marker w/o > regenerating the graph scene. But the *drawing* hierarchy (as opposed to > the object hierarchy) needs some work . Once you have changed a property, > the entire graph is redrawn. This is a known limitation and will change > in the not-too-distant-future. One advantage of working in mainstream in > open source software is the network effect. With 10 some-odd developers > including institutions such as the U of C, STScI, JPL and NOAA, bugs and > limitations of matplotlib tend to be fixed within minutes, days, weeks or > months. It looked to me that you could change some properties (like line style) after creating the graph, but other things were hard to change (marker style?). Therefore I deleted the graph and rebuilt it from scratch each time. The way you modify a property is different from how you set it when building a graph, and so it was difficult to create a transparent interface. > Your package looks very nice. It specifically addresses two limitations > in matplotlib that we would like to address -- a GUI interface for > creating figures and a way to save the figure at any point as a high level > description (rather than an image). I do wish you had publicly voiced the > problems you ran into along the way; I just searched the archives and saw > only one post from you on the users list which I answered 28 minutes later > with > > http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=10124206 > > after which I never heard from you again. Such response times are fairly > typical on the list, but if you don't report the bugs and follow up on the > suggested fixes, we can't fix them. Sorry - much of my work was done when I didn't have a very good internet connection, and so it was hard for me to collaborate over bugs. I took the easy option of expanding the small codebase I already have (which I knew pretty well!), over debugging someone else's code. > Anyway, nice work on veusz. Are you committed to the GPL license? > matplotlib uses a more permissive license (PSF compatible) mainly to > encourage contributions from the commercial sector. As you suggest, it is > still possible for someone to take the work you've done on the GUI > frontend and expose matplotlib as a backend based on your prior > experiments. The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboroa
Re: ANN: Veusz 0.5 - a scientific plotting package
Hi Jeremy, I'm the matplotlib author -- I'm writing under a different email address since my email server seems to be dying... I'll start by saying that I for one won't criticize you for rolling you own plotting package rather than join forces with an existing project. I've been accused of the same, on more than one occasion :-) But I'm also aware of the problem that this creates -- the tyranny of choice. python is so fun to code in that many developers are looking for a reason to find an existant package inadequate so they have an excuse to write their own replacement. Hence we have a proliferation of web-app frameworks, plotting packages, array objects and so on. There is a lot of duplicated effort in many arenas and it would be nice to collaborate more. I read over your scipy list of problems that you found in matplotlib -- some were helpful and some, as you note, have been long fixed. One critique you might flesh out for me is the notion that matplotlib's object model is baroque -- most of the developers feel the object model is fairly solid. You weren't by chance, trying to use the procedural pylab (aka matlab) interface, were you, since pylab itself is just a wrapper of the OO matplotlib API? One area in the object model that we plan to change is to make high level plot objects (scatter, error, histogram) etc, proper objects, ala gnuplot. Right now they are methods that generate primitive objects (lines, rectangles, text, etc). Another area you identify as a problem with matplotlib is the need to regenerate the entire graph when one property is changed. This is true in one way and false in another. matplotlib does have a proper object model -- eg, you can selectively change the facecolor of a marker w/o regenerating the graph scene. But the *drawing* hierarchy (as opposed to the object hierarchy) needs some work . Once you have changed a property, the entire graph is redrawn. This is a known limitation and will change in the not-too-distant-future. One advantage of working in mainstream in open source software is the network effect. With 10 some-odd developers including institutions such as the U of C, STScI, JPL and NOAA, bugs and limitations of matplotlib tend to be fixed within minutes, days, weeks or months. Your package looks very nice. It specifically addresses two limitations in matplotlib that we would like to address -- a GUI interface for creating figures and a way to save the figure at any point as a high level description (rather than an image). I do wish you had publicly voiced the problems you ran into along the way; I just searched the archives and saw only one post from you on the users list which I answered 28 minutes later with http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=10124206 after which I never heard from you again. Such response times are fairly typical on the list, but if you don't report the bugs and follow up on the suggested fixes, we can't fix them. Anyway, nice work on veusz. Are you committed to the GPL license? matplotlib uses a more permissive license (PSF compatible) mainly to encourage contributions from the commercial sector. As you suggest, it is still possible for someone to take the work you've done on the GUI frontend and expose matplotlib as a backend based on your prior experiments. The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboroatory and others are supporting the QT backend, and they might be willing to contribute some time to porting your GUI frontend to matplotlib, provided the license of veusz was compatible with the mpl license. There are two specific issues you raised in the scipy post you linked to that I'll take issue with: >> In my experience, the plotting code isn't that hard to do. >> The hardest part was making the axes look good. In my experience, the hardest part of plotting code is supporting all the ways in which people want to use the code, and that includes embedding the plot in their GUI of choice, working across platforms, supporting script based, interactive shell work, application developers, web app developers and so on. There are quite a few plotting idioms that are mission critical to many developers, and supporting them all is a complex task. I'm fond of pointing out the combinatorial problem -- take every GUI, cross two major versions in the wild, cross the big-three platforms, cross the standard ways in which people want to work with their plots and you have a lot of work to do. veusz "solves" this problem by restricting choice, which is a respectable solution. matplotlib takes the opposite tack and tries to support the user in the environment in which they want to work. The second point is >> I've done 90% of what's needed there. Basically, I'll be happy >> when contouring and images are added. I tend to disagree that contouring and images are only 10% -- good contouring, contour labeling, and image support strong enough to satisfy people for whom images are their lifeblood is hard, and
Re: ANN: Veusz 0.5 - a scientific plotting package
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 00:55:17 -0700, hemanth wrote: > Why not matplotlib? Of late, it has seemed to have picked up a lot of > attention. I would prefer that the different plotting packages developers > join hands and implement missing features into a single plotting package > and make this a part of Python standard library. In contrast to the > various web frameworks we now have in Python, it is preferable to have > atleast one plotting package as a standard Python package. I made a reply on this subject to the SciPy mailing list: http://www.scipy.org/mailinglists/mailman?fn=scipy-user/2005-April/004312.html Basically my main issue was the baroque object structure that matplotlib used (it may have got better then), and its speed (which has). The difficulty of writing a plotting package is the user interface, and so I don't think I'm wasting much effort by having my own plotting routines. I've done 90% of what's needed there. Basically, I'll be happy when contouring and images are added. The advantage of Veusz is the nice object-based system of building up a plot. I have a version of veusz which used matplotlib as a backend, but I abandoned that several months ago. Jeremy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: ANN: Veusz 0.5 - a scientific plotting package
Why not matplotlib? Of late, it has seemed to have picked up a lot of attention. I would prefer that the different plotting packages developers join hands and implement missing features into a single plotting package and make this a part of Python standard library. In contrast to the various web frameworks we now have in Python, it is preferable to have atleast one plotting package as a standard Python package. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: ANN: Veusz 0.5 - a scientific plotting package
Jeremy Sanders <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Veusz 0.5 > - > Velvet Ember Under Sky Zenith > - > http://home.gna.org/veusz/ > > Veusz is a scientific plotting package written in Python (currently > 100% Python). It uses PyQt for display and user-interfaces, and > numarray for handling the numeric data. Veusz is designed to produce > publication-ready Postscript output. Just curious how veusz compares to other python plotting libraries, such as matplotlib... Dan -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
ANN: Veusz 0.5 - a scientific plotting package
Veusz 0.5 - Velvet Ember Under Sky Zenith - http://home.gna.org/veusz/ Veusz is Copyright (C) 2003-2005 Jeremy Sanders <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Licenced under the GPL (version 2 or greater) Veusz is a scientific plotting package written in Python (currently 100% Python). It uses PyQt for display and user-interfaces, and numarray for handling the numeric data. Veusz is designed to produce publication-ready Postscript output. Veusz provides a GUI, command line and scripting interface (based on Python) to its plotting facilities. The plots are built using an object-based system to provide a consistent interface. Changes from 0.4: Installation: * distutils used to install the package. RPMS available. Plotting: * Different error bar styles (diamond, curve...) * "Matched" axes, with the same scale on each * Data can be linked from external files instead of embedded in document * Filled regions under/over functions or xy plots * Improved function clipping near edge of plot * Default values can be set for settings, which are remembered between sessions (e.g. blue points for xy3). * Rotated text labels * Improved fitting, giving results from chi2, etc.. UI: * Can move around widgets and delete them * Exception dump dialog to send bug reports * Improved import dialog help * Propagate settings between widgets * Window positions are saved between sessions Reading data: * Better error handling when reading data + Numerous bug fixes Features of package: * X-Y plots (with errorbars) * Stepped plots (for histograms) * Line plots * Function plots * Fitting functions to data * Stacked plots and arrays of plots * Plot keys * Plot labels * LaTeX-like formatting for text * EPS output * Simple data importing * Scripting interface * Save/Load plots To be done: * Contour plots * Images * UI improvements * Import filters (for qdp and other plotting packages, fits, csv) * Data manipulation * Python embedding interface (for embedding Veusz in other programs). [some of the external interface is complete] Requirements: Python (probably 2.3 or greater required) http://www.python.org/ Qt (free edition) http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/ PyQt (SIP is required to be installed first) http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/pyqt/ http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/sip/ numarray http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/numarray Microsoft Core Fonts (recommended) http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/ For documentation on using Veusz, see the "Documents" directory. The manual is in pdf, html and text format (generated from docbook). If you enjoy using Veusz, I would love to hear from you. Please join the mailing lists at https://gna.org/mail/?group=veusz to discuss new features or if you'd like to contribute code. The newest code can always be found in CVS. Cheers Jeremy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
