Re: Different graphing options

[Joe Smith <jes martnet com>]

muppet wrote: [note: copious snippage]
> Narrow the scope a bit; what's more important?
>
>  - 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)

Well said.  Graphing involves serious tradeoffs: you _really_ need to 
think about what's most important because no solution (that I've found) 
comes anywhere close to covering everything (you+I+others) want.

I would add printing to that list.  Lots of packages do either 
interactive, or good printing, but not both.

FWIW (and since it hasn't been mentioned yet) I've been fairly happy 
using Grace from Perl: http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/

Since you're dumping data into a full-featured plotting program, you can 
allow the user to do whatever they want with it.  I find most people 
(including me) are fairly baffled and/or frustrated by gnuplot's 
interface.  Grace's interface is pretty clunky but it's a lot more 
familiar than gnuplot.

<Joe