Bewildered graphs

[Will Stuyvesant]

> [Mark Fenbers]
> 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.

You are thinking about generating a .PNG or .JPG or .GIF or something
like that?

I have an idea: if your app is running on a web server cluster
already, how about generating dynamic web pages displaying the graph. 
You could for example display this whole picture with SVG
(http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/ ).  Even a simple CGI script in Python
generating HTML plus CSS using "position: absolute" can do much like
this.  Note the BIG advantage of such a web application: everybody can
use it with their browser; no installations, compilations,
configurations.  And the best way to generate SVG or HTML with Python
from CGI is just using the string library and writing your own
functions for things you notice you do often.

[
I *know* they plan to deprecate the string library.  But most web
hosting Pythons are still 1.5.2 :-!
]

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