Re: Different graphing options

[muppet <scott asofyet org>]

On May 5, 2005, at 2:13 AM, ofey aikon wrote:

> I want to do some pretty graphs in Gtk2 using my dataset. I guess my
> options are the following.

Narrow the scope a bit; what's more important?

 - showing plots (only have to exist in the gui)
 - saving plots (want to save them, but preview in a gui)
 - interactive plots (user can mouse-over and/or edit data)
 - high-quality plots (speed is not a concern)
 - quick plots (e.g., a fast-updating gui)
 - type of plots (3D surface plots, pie charts, or just lines on axes)
 - ease of creation (full-featured, singing and dancing grapher or 
drawing stuff on a canvas for yourself)

There are lots of charting and plotting options on CPAN, each with its 
own strengths and weaknesses.


> 1. Wrap gnuplot.
>  - Rich in functionality. May be too heavy to wrap. Don't know how
> well it works on win32.

Chart::Graph::Gnuplot (part of Chart::Graph)
http://search.cpan.org/~caidaperl/Chart-Graph-2.0/Graph/Gnuplot.pm

Term::Gnuplot
http://search.cpan.org/~ilyaz/Term-Gnuplot/Gnuplot.pm

Geo::GNUPlot
http://search.cpan.org/~carpenter/Geo-GNUPlot_0.01/lib/Geo/GNUPlot.pm


> 2. Use gtkplot in the gtkextra+ project.
>  - No perl bindings AFAIK.

used that in the 1.x series once upon a time with an in-house library.  
it turned out to be very over-engineered for what we wanted.  GtkPlot 
allows the user to edit and interact with the data, which, while cool, 
is often unnecessary.  i have not tried GtkPlot since then.  that was 
about four years ago; we abandoned GtkPlot and used 
Chart::Graph::Gnuplot, and eventually dropped even that because we 
decided that charting was beyond the scope of our library. (no we use 
jpgraph on the other end of the data pipeline. ;-)

i'm also not sure if it's possible to use GtkPlot to generate plot 
images without having a window or X connection around.  dunno if that's 
important to you, but it may be worth looking into.

it looks like the gtkextra-2.0 API is a little more binding-friendly, 
but i'm a little unnerved that they don't appear to have released out 
of cvs.

if there's a good demand for bindings for gtkextra-2.0, then please 
make noise, and we'll arrange something.  (sorry, i'm not in a position 
to whip them out of thin air at the moment.)


> 3. Stream an image using GD::Graph.
>  - Works on win32 too.

GD is pretty widely used, and working with images is fairly easy from 
Gtk2.


There's also Ploticus, which has a funky input syntax but generates 
nice-looking output.

http://ploticus.sourceforge.net/


--
I don't have a drinking problem,
'cept when i can't get drink.
  -- Tom Waits