[SciPy-User] OT: Re: ANN: Veusz 1.12 - a python-based GUI/scripted scientific plotting package

Wed Jun 29 01:14:53 EDT 2011

Hi,

Veusz appears to be a very capable plotting program. However, I can't use it because it, like many other plotting programs, lacks a flexible and easy import mechanism. My basis for comparison is Igor Pro which allows the user to specify, in an easy-to-use dialog box, the details of the formatting of the data to be imported. This includes both text and binary files, along with Excel files.

For example, the binary import dialog lets the user quickly specify single or double floats or 8-, 16-, or 32-bit signed or unsigned integers, how many bytes to skip (allowing a header to be bypassed or to access an arbitrary point in the file), and the number of arrays in the file and the number of points in an array. The latter allows e.g. the easy specification of, say, importing x and y data in either contiguous x and y arrays, or as (x, y) pairs. Further, there is an easy choice to convert any of the above data types from the imported data to any of the other data types at the time of importation.

One of the many, many cases that this arrangement can handle is importing a variety of audio file formats, and the one-off formats of my own invention. (I do simulations in a compiled language and use Igor Pro to examine the results.)

I realize that I can write my own importer for Vuesz but that is not something that I want to have to do (and I don't know Python well) every time I have a new file format.

I am looking at letting go of Igor Pro when I upgrade to OS X Lion which will not allow the running of Power PC programs--the Rosetta emulator is no longer included. (Igor Pro is Intel-native nowadays but my  version is several years old, and Power PC.) Igor Pro is $595 and well worth it, but I use it sporadically and there are many options available for less or for free. Unfortunately, they all lack flexible and _easy_to_use_importing functions. (Plot.app on OS X is the exception, nearly matching Igor Pro, lacking only 8-bit integers.)

It should be quite easy to incorporate an Igor Pro-like importing function in to Vuesz and most other plotting programs. (I didn't bother to describe the text importing capabilities.) So at least for Veusz, please consider this a feature request.

Adding a bias from the OS X world, a Quick Look plugin is always welcome and pretty much standard for all apps these days. I understand that they can be rather straightforward to make.

Jerry

On Jun 28, 2011, at 4:08 AM, Jeremy Sanders wrote:

> I am pleased to announce Veusz 1.12, a python-based GUI/command 
> line/scripted plotting package.
> 
> This release has some new features and a large number of bug fixes (see 
> below).
> 
> Jeremy
> 
> 
> Veusz 1.12
> ----------
> Velvet Ember Under Sky Zenith
> -----------------------------
> http://home.gna.org/veusz/
> 
> Copyright (C) 2003-2011 Jeremy Sanders <jeremy at jeremysanders.net>
> and contributors.
> 
> Licenced under the GPL (version 2 or greater).
> 
> Veusz is a Qt4 based scientific plotting package. It is written in
> Python, using PyQt4 for display and user-interfaces, and numpy for
> handling the numeric data. Veusz is designed to produce
> publication-ready Postscript/PDF/SVG output. The user interface aims
> to be simple, consistent and powerful.
> 
> Veusz provides a GUI, command line, embedding and scripting interface
> (based on Python) to its plotting facilities. It also allows for
> manipulation and editing of datasets. Data can be captured from
> external sources such as internet sockets or other programs.
> 
> Changes in 1.12:
> * Multiple widgets can now be selected for editing properties
> * Add Edit->Select menu and context menu for above
> * Added context menu on dataset browser for filenames to reload,
>  delete or unlink all associated datasets
> * New tree-like dataset browsing widget is shown in data edit dialog
> * Importing 1D fits images is now supported
> * Date / time data has its own dataset type
> * The data edit dialog box can create or edit date/time data in
>  human-readable form
> 
> Minor improvements:
> * Add LaTeX commands \cdot, \nabla, \overline plus some arrows
> * Inform user in exception dialog if a new version is available
> * Add linevertbar and linehorzbar error bar styles
> 
> Bug fixes:
> * Fix crash on filling filled error regions if no error bars
> * Remove grouping separator to numbers in locale as it creates
>  ambiguous lists of numbers
> * Undo works properly for boolean and integer settings
> * Prevent widgets getting the same names when dragging and dropping
> * Hidden plot widgets are ignored when calculating axis ranges
> * Combo boxes are now case sensitive when displaying matches with
>  previous text
> * Fix errors if plotting DatasetRange or Dataset1DPlugin datasets
>  against data with nan values
> * Fix division by zero in dataset preview
> * Do not leave settings pointing to deleted widgets after an undo
> * Fix errors when using super/subscripts of super/subscripts
> * Fix crash when giving positions of bar plot and labels
> * Do not allow dataset names to be invalid after remaining
> * Several EMF format bug fixes, including not showing hidden lines
>  and not connecting points making curves
> * Stop crash when contouring zero-sized datasets
> 
> Features of package:
> * X-Y plots (with errorbars)
> * Line and function plots
> * Contour plots
> * Images (with colour mappings and colorbars)
> * Stepped plots (for histograms)
> * Bar graphs
> * Vector field plots
> * Box plots
> * Polar plots
> * Plotting dates
> * Fitting functions to data
> * Stacked plots and arrays of plots
> * Plot keys
> * Plot labels
> * Shapes and arrows on plots
> * LaTeX-like formatting for text
> * EPS/PDF/PNG/SVG/EMF export
> * Scripting interface
> * Dataset creation/manipulation
> * Embed Veusz within other programs
> * Text, CSV, FITS and user-plugin importing
> * Data can be captured from external sources
> * User defined functions, constants and can import external Python 
> functions
> * Plugin interface to allow user to write or load code to
>   - import data using new formats
>   - make new datasets, optionally linked to existing datasets
>   - arbitrarily manipulate the document
> * Data picker
> 
> Requirements for source install:
> Python (2.4 or greater required)
>  http://www.python.org/
> Qt >= 4.3 (free edition)
>  http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/  
> PyQt >= 4.3 (SIP is required to be installed first)
>  http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/pyqt/
>  http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/sip/
> numpy >= 1.0
>  http://numpy.scipy.org/
> 
> Optional:
> Microsoft Core Fonts (recommended for nice output)
>  http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/
> PyFITS >= 1.1 (optional for FITS import)
>  http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/pyfits
> pyemf >= 2.0.0 (optional for EMF export)
>  http://pyemf.sourceforge.net/
> PyMinuit >= 1.1.2 (optional improved fitting)
>  http://code.google.com/p/pyminuit/
> For EMF and better SVG export, PyQt >= 4.6 or better is
>  required, to fix a bug in the C++ wrapping
> 
> 
> For documentation on using Veusz, see the "Documents" directory. The
> manual is in PDF, HTML and text format (generated from docbook). The
> examples are also useful documentation. Please also see and contribute
> to the Veusz wiki: http://barmag.net/veusz-wiki/
> 
> Issues with the current version:
> 
> * Some recent versions of PyQt/SIP will causes crashes when exporting
>  SVG files. Update to 4.7.4 (if released) or a recent snapshot to
>  solve this problem.
> 
> If you enjoy using Veusz, we would love to hear from you. Please join
> the mailing lists at
> 
> https://gna.org/mail/?group=veusz
> 
> to discuss new features or if you'd like to contribute code. The
> latest code can always be found in the Git repository
> at https://github.com/jeremysanders/veusz.git.
> 
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