Bewildered graphs

[Jeffrey.S.Whitaker at noaa.gov]

On Sat, 5 Jul 2003, Mark Fenbers wrote:

> I am investigating Python for the sake of ultimately generating hydrographs
> (such as this: http://ahps.erh.noaa.gov/iln/ahps/RiverDat/gifs/prgo1.png)
> on-the-fly from a web server cluster.  I have not used Python previously and do
> not yet know if Python is very useful for this or if I am wasting my time.
>
> Quite frankly, I am a little bewildered.  Not only is there Python, but there
> are many extention modules which cloud up my view as to what I will need.
> There's Scientific Python, which sounds promising, but there's also SciPy which
> in itself has gnuplot, xplt and plt modules.  I know enough about gnuplot to
> know that it won't meet my needs because I need to be able to shade regions
> above certain values such as done in yellow on the example hydrograph (the link
> above).  It also doesn't have many font options or the ability to place an image
> such as the NOAA logo.
>
> Can someone kindly guide me as to what I would most likely need to replicate the
> graph shown via the link above?
>

Mark:

NCL (http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/nclapps/gsn/) will do what you need.  I've
written a simple python module that allows you to embed NCL scripts in
python code (http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/~jsw/python/pyncl.html).

http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/csm/support/CSM_Graphics/index.shtml has some
nice NCL plotting examples.

-Jeff


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