[SciPy-user] [Newbie] High-performance plotting of large datasets

[Stef Mientki]

Bryan Cole wrote:
> Hi Stef,
>   
>> unfortunately you're not able to post your code,
>> (btw why not ?)
>>     
>
> Although I started developing the plot-widget in my own time (I did
> publish this first version on my home web-site (now defunct due to lack
> of time)), development continued at my workplace over 2 years or more
> now so now the code ownership is ambiguous. The best plan is for me to
> get permission to release the code. Unfortunately, upper management are
> a bit suspicious of OSS at my workplace. I'm working on this...
>
>   
>> but maybe you can answer a few questions ....
>>
>> Bryan Cole wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I'm an ex-LabView user, now using python for lab data-acquisition and
>>> analysis for some years now. It's well worth the switch.
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>> I'm too a former MatLab / LabView user,
>> and I'm quit happy with Python / Scipy / wxPython for now.
>> At the moment I'm trying to write an open source LabView equivalent,
>> first results can be seen here:
>>   
>> http://oase.uci.kun.nl/~mientki/data_www/pylab_works/pw_animations_screenshots.html
>>     
>>> Your best bet is
>>>       
>
> Nice work. I must confess, I'm not a huge fan of the "graphical
> programming" concept (otherwise I'd probably still be using labview).
I don't think LabView and Visual Programming are identical.
In my humble opinion, LabView violated against some vey basic rules,
like flattness of information, and uniformity / simplicity.

>  My
> wish would be a nice set of technical widgets (plots, knobs, sliders,
> gauges etc.) which are 1) documented and 2) integrated with a wxPython
> GUI-designer like wxGlade. In fact, a "technical edition" of wxGlade
> with such things integrated would make creating data-acquisition
> application easy to the newcomer without compromising flexibility. 
>
>   
the you're lucky, ...
... I tried to get wxGlade running on 2 different machines, both failed ;-)
>>>   
>>>       
>> I'm in the middle of writing a real time plot widget, based on direct 
>> canvas drawing,
>> don't know yet how fast it is. I hope to make a video of it next week.
>>     
> The NI-DAQmx drivers probably represent as good a data-acquisition API
> as you'll get. It's pretty much a 1:1 mapping to LabView nodes. The
> task-based approach is easy to work with although the NI documentation
> is far from perfect. You could make NI-DAQmx task nodes for your
> pylab_works framework. If you need cross-platform, re-implement the
> required functionality on linux with Comedi.
>
>   
NI-DAQmx would be a good standard,
and I think I've even seen a Python wrapper for it,
but I can't find it anymore.
In fact the windows program I use in PyLab_Works also contains a 
NI-DAQmx wrapper.
> The main recommendation I would make to anyone writing data-acquisition
> stuff in python is Use Traits/TraitsUI! The ability to auto-generate a
> GUI to configure hardware objects based on their Traits definitions is a
> *huge* productivity saving. 
>   
You might be quit right,
I've heard this reasoning more than once,
but ....
... I'm looking at the wrong documents
         or
... I'm simply too stupid
         or
... I'm a completely spoiled windows user
but I really really don't understand one bit of Traits :-(

cheers,
Stef