ANN: gracePlot.py

[Nathaniel Gray]

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                     Announcing:  gracePlot.py v0.5
 
             An interactive, user-friendly python interface to the
                         Grace plotting package.

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* WHAT IS IT?

gracePlot.py is a high-level interface to the Grace plotting package available
at: http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/  The goal of gracePlot is to offer
the user an interactive plotting capability similar to that found in commercial
packages such as Matlab and Mathematica, including GUI support for modifying
plots and a user-friendly, pythonic interactive command-line interface.


* WHAT FEATURES DOES IT OFFER?

Since this package is in the early stages of development it does not yet provide
high-level command-line access to all of Grace's plotting functionality.  It 
does, however, offer:
    *   Line Plots (with or without errorbars)
    *   Histograms (with or without errorbars)
    *   Multiple graphs (sets of axes) per plot
    *   Multiple simultaneous plots (grace sessions)
    *   Overlaid graphs, using a 'hold' command similar to Matlab's
    *   Legends, titles, axis labels, and axis limits
    *   Integration with Numerical Python and Scientific Python's Histogram
        object

Note that all advanced features and customizations are available through the
Grace UI, so you can compose rough plots in Python and then polish them up in
Grace.


* HOW DO I USE IT?

Here is an example session that creates a plot with two sets of axes, putting
a line plot in one and a histogram in the other:
    Python 2.1.1 (#2, Jul 31 2001, 14:10:42)
    [GCC 2.96 20000731 (Linux-Mandrake 8.0 2.96-0.48mdk)] on linux2
    Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> from gracePlot import gracePlot
    >>> p = gracePlot() # A grace session opens
    >>> p.plot( [1,2,3,4,5], [10, 4, 2, 4, 10], [1, 0.7, 0.5, 1, 2],
    ...         symbols=1 )  # A plot with errorbars & symbols
    >>> p.title('Funding: Ministry of Silly Walks')
    >>> p.ylabel('Funding (Pounds\S10\N)')
    >>> p.multi(2,1)  # Multiple plots: 2 rows, 1 column
    >>> p.xlimit(0, 6)  # Set limits of x-axis
    >>> p.focus(1,0)  # Set current graph to row 1, column 0
    >>> p.histoPlot( [7, 15, 18, 20, 21], x_min=1,
    ...              dy=[2, 3.5, 4.6, 7.2, 8.8]) # A histogram w/errorbars
    >>> p.xlabel('Silliness Index')
    >>> p.ylabel('Applications/yr')
    >>> p.xlimit(0, 6)  # Set limits of x-axis

The result of this session can be found at:
    http://www.idyll.org/~n8gray/code/index.html


* WHERE DO I GET IT?

gracePlot is available here:
    http://www.idyll.org/~n8gray/code/index.html

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Cheers,
-n8

--
Nathaniel Gray

California Institute of Technology
Computation and Neural Systems
--