mac grapher for linux
 

Has anyone here ever used the "Grapher" application that all Macs come with?
It is a very nice piece of software with support for 3D and many types
of equations, and it's very useful for math/science purposes. Is
there something comparable for Debian or Linux in general? I was
looking on Google but couldn't find any convincing replacements. Most
of the stuff I see is very rudimentary 2D graphers that only allow a
very limited amount (like 3) equations. I saw labplot, but I didn't
try that because I don't want all the KDE dependencies (which, as an
xfce user, means a lot of extra packages).
I also gnuplot, which seems to be decent except it doesn't have the
nice friendly GUI of mac's grapher. Neither of these are great as
substitutes, but I haven't found anything better.

So basically, I was wondering if anyone had any ideas before I go
invest the time into learning how to use gnuplot?

Thanks in advance,
--
Jimmy Wu
Registered Linux User #454138
() ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
/ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments


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mac grapher for linux
 

I'm forwarding this to the d-science list, where this stuff is often discussed.

On 13/05/2008, Jimmy Wu <jimmywu013+debian@gmail.com> wrote:
> Has anyone here ever used the "Grapher" application that all Macs come with?
> It is a very nice piece of software with support for 3D and many types
> of equations, and it's very useful for math/science purposes. Is
> there something comparable for Debian or Linux in general? I was
> looking on Google but couldn't find any convincing replacements. Most
> of the stuff I see is very rudimentary 2D graphers that only allow a
> very limited amount (like 3) equations. I saw labplot, but I didn't
> try that because I don't want all the KDE dependencies (which, as an
> xfce user, means a lot of extra packages).
> I also gnuplot, which seems to be decent except it doesn't have the
> nice friendly GUI of mac's grapher. Neither of these are great as
> substitutes, but I haven't found anything better.
>
> So basically, I was wondering if anyone had any ideas before I go
> invest the time into learning how to use gnuplot?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> --
> Jimmy Wu
> Registered Linux User #454138
> () ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
> / www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments

I use VTK myself, which is certainly not exactly friendly as it
requires programming a bit, but it produces very high-quality
graphics. I mostly use it with its Octave frontend, Octaviz. If you're
comfortable with Octave-like (Matlab-like) syntax, you should
definitely give it a try.

gnuplot is very widespread and many people swear by it. Gnuplot's 2d
plotting is quite good, but its 3d graphs look ugly compared to the
VTK output. It certainly seems worthwhile to invest some time to learn
about Gnuplot.

I know we have more options, but I can't remember what they are.
There's a pretty big graphics package that I think had to do with KDE.
I seem to recall the maintainer had a female name, but it looks like
it's not Miriam Ruiz like usual.

- Jordi G. H.


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mac grapher for linux
 

On 13/05/2008, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <jordigh@gmail.com> wrote:
> I know we have more options, but I can't remember what they are.
> There's a pretty big graphics package that I think had to do with KDE.
> I seem to recall the maintainer had a female name, but it looks like
> it's not Miriam Ruiz like usual.

Labplot. Try that one. Packaged by Helen Faulkner, but she recently RFHed it.

- Jordi G. H.


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mac grapher for linux
 

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 11:09 PM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso
<jordigh@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm forwarding this to the d-science list, where this stuff is often discussed.
>
> On 13/05/2008, Jimmy Wu <jimmywu013+debian@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Has anyone here ever used the "Grapher" application that all Macs come with?
> > It is a very nice piece of software with support for 3D and many types
> > of equations, and it's very useful for math/science purposes. Is
> > there something comparable for Debian or Linux in general? I was
> > looking on Google but couldn't find any convincing replacements. Most
> > of the stuff I see is very rudimentary 2D graphers that only allow a
> > very limited amount (like 3) equations. I saw labplot, but I didn't
> > try that because I don't want all the KDE dependencies (which, as an
> > xfce user, means a lot of extra packages).
> > I also gnuplot, which seems to be decent except it doesn't have the
> > nice friendly GUI of mac's grapher. Neither of these are great as
> > substitutes, but I haven't found anything better.
> >
> > So basically, I was wondering if anyone had any ideas before I go
> > invest the time into learning how to use gnuplot?

I think you should look into SAGE's plotter. For 2d it uses matplotlib
and four 3d it uses jmol
and tachyon.
http://www.sagemath.org/


> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> > --
> > Jimmy Wu
> > Registered Linux User #454138
> > () ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
> > / www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments
>
> I use VTK myself, which is certainly not exactly friendly as it
> requires programming a bit, but it produces very high-quality
> graphics. I mostly use it with its Octave frontend, Octaviz. If you're
> comfortable with Octave-like (Matlab-like) syntax, you should
> definitely give it a try.
>
> gnuplot is very widespread and many people swear by it. Gnuplot's 2d
> plotting is quite good, but its 3d graphs look ugly compared to the
> VTK output. It certainly seems worthwhile to invest some time to learn
> about Gnuplot.
>
> I know we have more options, but I can't remember what they are.
> There's a pretty big graphics package that I think had to do with KDE.
> I seem to recall the maintainer had a female name, but it looks like
> it's not Miriam Ruiz like usual.
>
> - Jordi G. H.
>
>
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-science-request@lists.debian.org
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
>
>


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mac grapher for linux
 

>>>>> "Jordi" == Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <jordigh@gmail.com> writes:

> I know we have more options, but I can't remember what they
> are. There's a pretty big graphics package that I think
> had to do with KDE. I seem to recall the maintainer had a
> female name, but it looks like it's not Miriam Ruiz like
> usual.

For high quality plots, I use R.

Mike


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mac grapher for linux
 

Hi lists,

Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> I'm forwarding this to the d-science list, where this stuff is often discussed.
>
> On 13/05/2008, Jimmy Wu <jimmywu013+debian@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Has anyone here ever used the "Grapher" application that all Macs come with?
>> It is a very nice piece of software with support for 3D and many types
>> of equations, and it's very useful for math/science purposes. Is
>> there something comparable for Debian or Linux in general? I was
>> looking on Google but couldn't find any convincing replacements. Most
>> of the stuff I see is very rudimentary 2D graphers that only allow a
>> very limited amount (like 3) equations. I saw labplot, but I didn't
>> try that because I don't want all the KDE dependencies (which, as an
>> xfce user, means a lot of extra packages).
>> I also gnuplot, which seems to be decent except it doesn't have the
>> nice friendly GUI of mac's grapher. Neither of these are great as
>> substitutes, but I haven't found anything better.
>>
>> So basically, I was wondering if anyone had any ideas before I go
>> invest the time into learning how to use gnuplot?

Let me put in a plug for ROOT. It's a (huge) piece of software used
mostly by the HEP community, but no reason that others shouldn't be able
to use it. There are not yet official Debian packages (except in
experimental), but unofficial ones can be obtained from
http://mirror.phy.bnl.gov/debian-root/ . The plan is to upload official
packages of ROOT version 5.18 in time for them to end up in Lenny.

It might not be exactly what you are looking for in terms of
user-friendliness, but if you are somewhat familiar with C++ or Python
(it has bindings for both) it can be learned pretty quickly and is very
powerful. See for instance this page: http://root.cern.ch/root/soeren/
or the big tutorial at http://root.cern.ch/root/Tutorials.html .

Just to give you an idea of what can be done, one can type "root" on the
command-line and then run the following code within ROOT's C++
interpreter to get a nice 3D plot of the function f(x,y) = sin x sin y
in the range x in (-10, 10), y in (-10, 10).

TF2 func("func", "sin(x)*sin(y)", -10, 10, -10, 10);
func.Draw("surf4");

There are many, many options for controlling the appearance of the
resulting plot.

Or if you prefer Python over C++, you can instead (after installing the
libroot-python-dev package) start up the Python interpreter and type
into it:

import ROOT
func = ROOT.TF2("func", "sin(x)*sin(y)", -10, 10, -10, 10)
func.Draw("surf4")

I think the existing unofficial packages were built against python 2.4,
so you'd have to install and run that version of Python explicitly, but
the forthcoming official ones will use python 2.5.

ROOT also has Ruby bindings but I'm not familiar with that language.

If Christian Holm (the package maintainer) is around on this mailing
list, he might have more to say about ROOT.

best regards,

--
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@gmail.com>
WWW: http://www.starplot.org/
WWW: http://people.debian.org/~kmccarty/
GPG: public key ID 4F83C751

mac grapher for linux
 

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 5:23 PM, Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@debian.org> wrote:
> Hi lists,
>
> Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
>> I'm forwarding this to the d-science list, where this stuff is often discussed.
>>
>> On 13/05/2008, Jimmy Wu <jimmywu013+debian@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Has anyone here ever used the "Grapher" application that all Macs come with?
>>> It is a very nice piece of software with support for 3D and many types
>>> of equations, and it's very useful for math/science purposes. Is
>>> there something comparable for Debian or Linux in general? I was
>>> looking on Google but couldn't find any convincing replacements. Most
>>> of the stuff I see is very rudimentary 2D graphers that only allow a
>>> very limited amount (like 3) equations. I saw labplot, but I didn't
>>> try that because I don't want all the KDE dependencies (which, as an
>>> xfce user, means a lot of extra packages).
>>> I also gnuplot, which seems to be decent except it doesn't have the
>>> nice friendly GUI of mac's grapher. Neither of these are great as
>>> substitutes, but I haven't found anything better.
>>>
>>> So basically, I was wondering if anyone had any ideas before I go
>>> invest the time into learning how to use gnuplot?
>
> Let me put in a plug for ROOT. It's a (huge) piece of software used
> mostly by the HEP community, but no reason that others shouldn't be able
> to use it. There are not yet official Debian packages (except in
> experimental), but unofficial ones can be obtained from
> http://mirror.phy.bnl.gov/debian-root/ . The plan is to upload official
> packages of ROOT version 5.18 in time for them to end up in Lenny.
>
> It might not be exactly what you are looking for in terms of
> user-friendliness, but if you are somewhat familiar with C++ or Python
> (it has bindings for both) it can be learned pretty quickly and is very
> powerful. See for instance this page: http://root.cern.ch/root/soeren/
> or the big tutorial at http://root.cern.ch/root/Tutorials.html .
>
> Just to give you an idea of what can be done, one can type "root" on the
> command-line and then run the following code within ROOT's C++
> interpreter to get a nice 3D plot of the function f(x,y) = sin x sin y
> in the range x in (-10, 10), y in (-10, 10).
>
> TF2 func("func", "sin(x)*sin(y)", -10, 10, -10, 10);
> func.Draw("surf4");
>
> There are many, many options for controlling the appearance of the
> resulting plot.
>
> Or if you prefer Python over C++, you can instead (after installing the
> libroot-python-dev package) start up the Python interpreter and type
> into it:
>
> import ROOT
> func = ROOT.TF2("func", "sin(x)*sin(y)", -10, 10, -10, 10)
> func.Draw("surf4")
>
> I think the existing unofficial packages were built against python 2.4,
> so you'd have to install and run that version of Python explicitly, but
> the forthcoming official ones will use python 2.5.
>
> ROOT also has Ruby bindings but I'm not familiar with that language.
>
> If Christian Holm (the package maintainer) is around on this mailing
> list, he might have more to say about ROOT.
>
> best regards,
>
> --
> Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@gmail.com>
> WWW: http://www.starplot.org/
> WWW: http://people.debian.org/~kmccarty/
> GPG: public key ID 4F83C751

Thank you to everyone for your responses
So just a quick summary:
I think I will go and learn how to use gnuplot (just to get familiar
with at least the basics).
I'll also go take a look at VTK and R and see how I like those.
SAGE and ROOT definitely sound interesting. I've registered for an
online Sage account, but I'd prefer to wait for an official Debian
package to make it into unstable before actually installing.

Thanks again for the help!
--
Jimmy Wu
Registered Linux User #454138
() ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
/ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments

mac grapher for linux
 

On 15/05/2008, Jimmy Wu <jimmywu013+debian@gmail.com> wrote:
> So just a quick summary:
> I think I will go and learn how to use gnuplot (just to get familiar
> with at least the basics).
> I'll also go take a look at VTK and R and see how I like those.
> SAGE and ROOT definitely sound interesting. I've registered for an
> online Sage account, but I'd prefer to wait for an official Debian
> package to make it into unstable before actually installing.

And labplot! Don't forget labplot! I just tried it out for the first
time yesterday, and it actually seems closest to what you described
Mac Grapher to be like. :-)

- Jordi G. H.


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mac grapher for linux
 

On Thursday 15 May 2008, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> On 15/05/2008, Jimmy Wu <jimmywu013+debian@gmail.com> wrote:
> > So just a quick summary:
> > I think I will go and learn how to use gnuplot (just to get familiar
> > with at least the basics).
> > I'll also go take a look at VTK and R and see how I like those.
> > SAGE and ROOT definitely sound interesting. I've registered for an
> > online Sage account, but I'd prefer to wait for an official Debian
> > package to make it into unstable before actually installing.
>
> And labplot! Don't forget labplot! I just tried it out for the first
> time yesterday, and it actually seems closest to what you described
> Mac Grapher to be like. :-)
>
> - Jordi G. H.

I'm jumping in rather late here, but I missed the start of this thread. You
might want to have a look at grace. It is quite powerful at 2-d plotting and
has some 3-d functionality. I mostly use the gui interface, but there is
also a batch mode that can be run from a shell or script. It takes some time
to get familiar with the gui operations. I use it almost exclusively for
preparing plots for publication. If you decide to try it take a look at the
examples to see what can be done with the program.

-Chris

------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Christopher Judd, Ph. D. judd@wadsworth.org |
------------------------------------------------------------------------


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