xmgrace

[Alan G Isaac <aisaac american edu>]

On Sun, 04 Jul 2004, Andrzej Grzegorcyzk apparently wrote:
> Is it not better just to make simple plugin to
> gnumeric which can send data xmgrace  and the rest of problem live for
> xmgrace team.

I am another user sympathetic to this argument, although I
would prefer to see gnuplot used.  (A number of applications
already use gnuplot this way successfully, because it is
built to facilitate this.  One example: the gretl
econometric package, which includes gnuplot.)  

So the question of functionality is perhaps two-fold:
i. is it interesting to the developers to offer easy access
to external plotting packages?  (And if so, what is the
right interface, given that many plotting options will need
to be set?)
ii. would reliance on some external package, e.g. gnuplot or
Grace, offer a quicker and more robust path to the graphics
functionality desired for gnumeric?

Speaking in complete ignorance of the underlying issues, it
does look like a lot of great Open Source graphics code is
not adequately exploited.

Cheers,
Alan Isaac