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Evaluations of Free Scientific Plotting Software?

Posted by Cliff on from the opinions-and-experiences dept.

paulywog asks: "I've used a fair number of non-Free (Beer) scientific plotting packages during college and as an engineer -- including Matlab, SigmaPlot and DeltaGraph, Excel (ick), SAS, my trusty HP 48G, among others. Lately, I've been looking for OSS resources that can provide similar features. Part of the reason is that there are some features that I've wanted, but never been able to get out the other software. One feature in particular: shade the area between two curves or shade the region outlined by error bars on this plot. I'd like to hear what experience other scientists and engineers have with OSS plotting packages in terms of ease of use, power, and flexibility."

4 of 12 comments (clear)

  1. GRI by JulianK11 · · Score: 2

    GRI was reviewed by Linux Magizine. It takes in a set of data and puts out a graph maybe that will help

  2. I use R (GNU S-plus clone) by mbg · · Score: 2
    I've been using GNU R for all my scientific plotting and data analysis work the last year or two. While there is supposedly some kind of GUI interface in the works, I do it all from the command line. That way you can automate, script, make things consistent, etc. New, fancy plots are a Simple Matter of Programming.

    R is a clone of the statistics programming language/environment S-plus, which was invented at Bell Labs a number of years ago. It's a very nice, interpreted language with elegant support for vectors, functional programming, and even some basic object-orientation.

    Grab the source from your nearest CRAN mirror or the Debian package.

  3. OpenDX by Brodeur · · Score: 2

    OpenDX can do just about anything you want. It's an extremely powerful and flexible scientific visualization tool. And IBM has recently opened the source code (under the IBM Public Liscense). There is, however, a considerable learning curve. Check out the gallery.

  4. gnuplot by NateKid · · Score: 3

    I discovered gnuplot a few weeks ago and it changed my life for the better. Gnuplot can be scripted to do whatever you want it do do, output charts in a bunch of formats, and even perform some calculations on data. It used to take me five or ten minutes to come up with a decent Excel graph from a flat text file (I'm not too bright :)). But recently I wrote a short perl script that takes directories of flat text files and generates gnuplot graphs at the rate of 20 per second. Postscript even, so they're ripe for embedding in your latex docs. Pretty nifty stuff (email me if you want it) if you're got reams of data that need to be summarized by your noontime class.
    Nate
    BTW, The "gnu" in "gnuplot" has nothing to do with the fsf but I still think it's open source.