Dislin is a nice plotting package

[Paul M.]

I must concur with Travis' assessment.  I've been using Dislin with
Python for the last 6 months or so, and have been very pleased with
the quality of plots I've been able to produce (I used many DISLIN
generated plots in my dissertation).

I written a very rudimentary object-oriented wrapper around the basic
DISLIN API.  I wanted to clean it up before releasing it (along with a
package I've been doing some multivariate statistics with) but perhaps
others are interested as well.

Is this of general interest?  Has somebody else already written
something similar?  I'm in the middle of moving cross-country right
now, but in a few weeks I should be able to throw my code and some
basic documentation onto a web page.


--Paul Magwene
pmagwene at midway.uchicago.edu



Travis Oliphant <Oliphant.Travis at mayo.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.10.9908021807550.12462-100000 at us2.mayo.edu...
> A users experience with plotting under Python:
>
> I know plotting has been discussed on this list before.  Many people
> indicate that the lack of quality plotting is preventing them from
using
> Numerical Python as a complete replacement for IDL or MATLAB.
>
> I have been using gist for the past several months and found it to
be
> excellent for investigative plotting (except I miss axes on surface
> plots).  The plot quality and flexibility with gist is excellent (it
is
> particularly easy to use for me with the matlab-like plotting
commands I
> implemented)
>
> However, recently I needed to produce plots with legends on them so
I
> turned to DISLIN.  I had seen DISLIN before and even had it
installed but
> it looked pretty complicated to use so I hadn't tried it since I
wasn't
> desperate for good plots.  Well, I've now tried it and I'm
impressed.
> It is a COMPLETE plotting system.  After a bit of reading to
understand
> the plotting paradigm (it is a very powerful but non-obvious system)
I can
> now make any plot I need with the system, and configure it to my
hearts
> content.
>
> There are even quick plotting functions defined so that I can make
> surface plots (with axes) and color plots with an automatic color
bar,
> with a single plot command.  I can even use dislin and gist together
which
> works very well.
>
> An object-oriented wrapper around the quick-plots so that all the
> properties could be set easily would make dislin quite phenomenal
for use
> with Python.
>
> I don't mean this post to discourage work on the fine plotting
efforts
> underway with PIDDLE, GRAPHITE, and Snow.  These packages will only
> improve the plotting choices under Python.  I just wanted to express
my
> pleasure at using DISLIN under Python and encourage others who may
be
> frustrated about their ability to produce quality output now or who
> may be holding back from adopting Python as their interactive
> analysis environment to check out DISLIN and see for yourself if it
will
> serve you.
>
> -Travis
>
> P.S. The dislin homepage is
>
> http://www.linmpi.mpg.de/dislin
>
>
>