[w_keller@gmx.de: Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] python extension on MacOS]

[Kelvin Chu]

Hi fellow PythonMac-ers.

The problem of a lack of a true cross-platform plotting program is one that
has troubled me for a while.  My lab has 2 flavors of Unix (IRIX and
RedHat), Windows and Macs.  The evil windows box is forced upon us because
it's the data-taking machine, but it's okay because we aren't forced to do
too much computation and analysis on it.

I cobbled together a more-or-less okay GUI driven solution by doing TKinter
and PMW that drove Gnuplot (yes, there is a version of Gnuplot for the
Mac).  It isn't satisfactory for really intense use on the Mac, but it
works on all 4 platforms.

Some things that don't work:
----------------------------

DISLIN is okay on the Linux boxes, and seems to do what it should, but
the author wants some outrageous amount of money for the SGI version, and
when I last wrote to him, was not at all interested in porting to the Mac
- neither MacOS nor the LinuxPPC platform.  Too bad for him (and for us, I
assume).

Yorick works on my G3 (233MHz) powerbook running MacOS 8.1, but is the kiss
of death on my iMac (350 MHz) running MacOS 9.0.4.  I have been unsuccesful
in getting any Gisty stuff to run.

If you are committed to the MacOS platform, I think your option is
Gnuplot and TKinter.  Either that or you start coughing up money for programs
like Igor or IDL for the Mac.  Running Gist and emulating X using the Mi/X
interface is truly painful.

Do things look brighter once MacOSX is released?  I hope so.

Cheers, -k

>As far as using Python on the Mac for "RAD/experimental tool for
>numerical programming and scientific work", the real shortcoming is the
>lack of a scientific plotting package. All the ones that exist are
>really links to varios plotting packages that araen't available on the
>Mac. (Dislin, gnuplot, yorick, etc.).

-- 

  kelvin.chu@uvm.edu				     (802) 656-0064
  http://www.uvm.edu/~kchu/			FAX: (802) 656-0817