[ANN] guiqwt v2.0.3

[Pierre.RAYBAUT at CEA.FR]

Hi all,

I am pleased to announce that `guiqwt` v2.0.3 has been released. This library was initially written to help me to develop signal/image processing software for internal use only, but after a long process I've just been able to share this work with the scientific Python community.

Based on PyQwt (plot widgets for PyQt4 graphical user interfaces) and on scientific modules NumPy and SciPy, guiqwt is a Python library for efficient 2-D data plotting (curves, 1-D and 2-D histograms, images) and signal/image processing application development.

As you certainly know, the most popular Python module for data plotting is currently matplotlib, an open-source library providing a lot of plot types and an API (the pylab interface) which is very close to MATLAB's plotting interface.

guiqwt plotting features are quite limited in terms of plot types compared to matplotlib. However the currently implemented plot types are much more efficient. For example, the guiqwt image showing function (imshow) do not make any copy of the displayed data, hence allowing to show images much larger than with its matplotlib's counterpart. In other terms, when showing a 30-MB image (16-bits unsigned integers for example) with guiqwt, no additional memory is wasted to display the image (except for the offscreen image of course which depends on the window size) whereas matplotlib takes more than 600-MB of additional memory (the original array is duplicated four times using 64-bits float data types).

guiqwt also provides the following features:

    guiqwt.pyplot: equivalent to matplotlib's pyplot module (pylab)

    supported plot items:

        * curves, error bar curves and 1-D histograms
        * images (RGB images are not supported), images with non-linear x/y scales, images with specified pixel size (e.g. loaded from DICOM files), 2-D histograms, pseudo-color images (pcolor)
        * labels, curve plot legends
        * shapes: polygon, polylines, rectangle, circle, ellipse and segment
        * annotated shapes (shapes with labels showing position and dimensions): rectangle with center position and size, circle with center position and diameter, ellipse with center position and diameters (these items are very useful to measure things directly on displayed images)

    curves, images and shapes:

        * multiple object selection for moving objects or editing their properties through automatically generated dialog boxes (guidata)
        * item list panel: move objects from foreground to background, show/hide objects, remove objects, ...
        * customizable aspect ratio
        * a lot of ready-to-use tools: plot canvas export to image file, image snapshot, image rectangular filter, etc.

    curves:

        * interval selection tools with labels showing results of computing on selected area
        * curve fitting tool with automatic fit, manual fit with sliders, ...

    images:

        * contrast adjustment panel: select the LUT by moving a range selection object on the image levels histogram, eliminate outliers, ...
        * X-axis and Y-axis cross-sections: support for multiple images, average cross-section tool on a rectangular area, ...
        * apply any affine transform to displayed images in real-time (rotation, magnification, translation, horizontal/vertical flip, ...)

    application development helpers:

        * ready-to-use curve and image plot widgets and dialog boxes
        * load/save graphical objects (curves, images, shapes)
        * a lot of test scripts which demonstrate guiqwt features


guiqwt has been successfully tested on GNU/Linux and Windows platforms.

Python package index page:
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/guiqwt/

Documentation, screenshots:
http://packages.python.org/guiqwt/

Downloads (source + Python(x,y) plugin):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guiqwt/

Cheers,
Pierre

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Dr. Pierre Raybaut
CEA - Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives