Interesting that TOPCAT came up in this survey.
--
Tim Jenness
JAC software
http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/~timj
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 11:53:46 -0700 (MST)
From: Dongshan Guo <[log in to unmask]>
To: Joe McMullin <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [aips2-workers]XY plotting
Hello,
Joe asked me to explore the plotting tools available for XY plotting. After
a not exhaustive but extensive serch, I found the following five tools may
be considered for XY plotting. Thanks to Kumar and Lindsey for providing
useful information. Main features of these tools are listed (Selectively
cut from the product descriptions and paste here).
More detailed information can be found from the provided web sites.
Welcome comments and suggestions.
===========================================================================
1. MIRAGE
Mirage is a Java-based software tool for exploratory analysis and visualization of multi-dimensional numerical data from an arbitrary domain of study. The tool shows projected images of points, point classes, or proximity structures in one, two, or higher dimensional subspaces, in linked views of tables, histograms, scatter plots, parallel coordinate plots, graphs, and trees, and over image or hypertext backgrounds linked with the data. It also provides facilities for arbitrary plot configuration, manual or automatic classification, and intuitive graphical querying. Analysis and visualization operations are controlled by a small, interpreted command language.
Mirage is publicly available (in Java bytecode) from the Bell Labs software distribution web site.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/tkh/mirage/index.html
--------------------------
Visualization features
--------------------------
The plots
Data visualization in Mirage is provided through four basic views plus some special plots. The four basic views are:
* Table view:
A table view of the data matrix, with a color tag attached to each row that shows its membership in partitional clusters. Points can be selected by a mouse dragged to cover the corresponding rows, and highlighted by changing the background color of the rows.
* Histogram view:
A histogram plot that can be reconfigured to focus on any single feature. This shows one-dimensional projections of the data set, divided into a (choosable) number of groups. The groups give a partitional structure of the data set in this subspace. One can select one or more clusters by drawing an interval with a mouse. Partitions from other sources are shown by coloring each bar in heights proportional to corresponding fractions of members in each cluster. A selected subset is highlighted and can be tracked in another subspace by reconfiguring the plot to another feature, or broadcasted to other displays.
* Scatter plot:
A scatter plot that displays a two-dimensional projection of the data, where the X and Y axes can be chosen to be any of the feature dimensions. Regions in the projection plane can be selected by drawing boxes or irregular regions with a mouse. The selected points are highlighted and the same subset can be tracked as the plot is reconfigured to show a different pair of features, or broadcasted to to other plots.
* Feature vector plot:
A feature vector plot is also known as a plot of parallel coordinates or profiles. This plot shows the projection of data on a multi-dimensional subspace by plotting the value of every feature against the index of that feature in the subspace. That is, a point projected on a subspace of m dimensions as (z1, ..., zm) is shown as a curve with nodes marked at (i,zi) for each i in [1,m]. This plot is a natural display for vectors such as a spectrum represented as intensities in each channel, or a time series that has values at each time step. Vectors of measurements on incomparable scales need to be first standardized so that each component has mean 0 and standard deviation 1. Data can be selected and broadcasted from this plot by drawing intervals in each feature dimension and composing unions or intersections of such intervals. Highlights and partitions are shown by coloring the curves. The plot can be reconfigured to show vectors in different subspaces with selections p!
reserved. Feature vectors are defined by format statements "format vec vecname x1 x2 x3 ... ". The vectors of the same name that are associated with different data entries are assumed to share the same set of indices.
-----------------------
Operations on the plots
-----------------------
Data in every plot can be selected by mouse operations that draw one or more boxes enclosing the selected region. This operation is available by clicking the rectangle icon in the right tool bar. Additional shapes such as an irregular region or Bezier curve are applicable in scatter plots. Intersection or union of multiple selected regions can be formed by toggling the intersection/union icon in the right tool bar.
Some plots have choosable actions built in, such as changing the axes, or stepping through each data entry. These actions can be triggered by pressing the circle icons in each plot. Pressing the solid circle triggers or stops a continuous action. Broken circles are for one step of the action in the forward or backward direction.
------------------------------
Operations with selected data
------------------------------
Data selected from each plot can be colored, shown in isolation in one of the four basic views, or broadcast to other plots.
============================================================================
2. Ptplot
Ptplot is released under the fairly liberal UC Berkeley copyright. Most files have the copyright at the top.
Ptplot is free for academic and commercial use.
http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/java/ptplot5.3/ptolemy/plot/doc/index.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ptplot 5.3 is a 2D data plotter and histogram tool implemented in Java. Ptplot can be used as a standalone applet or application, or it can be embedded in your own applet or application.
--------
features
--------
Ptplot is a set of two dimensional signal plotters components written in Java with the following properties:
* Embeddable in applets or applications.
* Auto-ranging.
* Automatic or manual labeling of axes.
* Automatic or manual tick marks.
* Logarithmic axes.
* Live, animated plots.
* Infinite zooming.
* Various plot styles: connected lines, scatter plot, bars, etc.
* Various point styles: none, dots, points, and unique marks.
* Multiple data sets and a legend.
* Color or black and white plotting.
* Error bars.
* Editable plots.
* PlotML, and XML language for specifying plots.
* Compatibility with pxgraph, an older plotting program.
-----------------------------------------
Backward compatibility with the C pxgraph program is provided in the compat package by the PxgraphApplet and PxgraphApplication classes in the compat package.
===========================================================================
3. TOPCAT
TOPCAT is a viewer and editor for tabular information. It has been designed for astronomical tabular data, but is not restricted to astronomical use. It can read and write a number of different astronomically important formats, including FITS tables and VOTable documents, and more formats will be added.
TOPCAT v0.3b is available on the current (Summer 2003) Starlink CD-ROM
http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/topcat/
The Starlink Project has recently made the decision to license its own software under the GNU General Public License (GPL) as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
--------------------------
list of its main features:
--------------------------
* View/edit table data in a scrollable browser
* View/edit table and column metadata
* Re-order or delete columns
* Insert 'synthetic' columns (algebraic expression)
* Sort rows on the values in a given column
* Define row subsets in various ways
* Plot columns against each other, distinguishing different subsets
* Calculate statistics on each column for some or all rows
* Write modified table out in original or different format
* Launch other programs (Mirage)
Please note: TOPCAT is a young product under active development, and the currently released version is beta software.
========================================================================
4. Grace
Grace is a WYSIWYG 2D plotting tool for the X Window System and M*tif. Grace runs on practically any version of Unix-like OS. As well, it has been successfully ported to VMS, OS/2, and Win9*/NT/2000/XP (some minor functionality may be missing, though).
Grace is a descendant of ACE/gr, also known as Xmgr
http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/
Grace is free in terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL)
---------
Features
---------
Graphing Flexibility
* Unlimited number of graphs
* Unlimited number of curves on a graph
* Up to 256 customizable colors
* 9 dashed line styles
* 32 fill patterns
* 10 built-in marker symbols; plus, any character glyph from any font can be used as a marker
* Color/fill markers
* Text annotations with subscripts, superscripts, mixed fonts, styles and colors and more complex typesetting
other
--------------------------------------------
Other Features (only list some of the major)
--------------------------------------------
Curve Fitting
* Linear and nonlinear least-squares
* Calculation and display of residuals
* Arbitrarily complex user-defined fitting functions, including dynamically loadable C/Fortran/... modules
Analysis Capability
* FFT
* Integration and differentiation
Data Formats
* Unlimited data size; up to six dimensions plus an optional array of strings
* Reads text data input files * Histograms
===========================================================================
5. SciGraphica
SciGraphica is a scientific application for data analysis and technical graphics. It pretends to be a clone of the popular commercial (and expensive) application "Microcal Origin". It fully supplies plotting features for 2D, 3D and polar charts. The aim is to obtain a fully-featured, cross-plattform, user-friendly, self-growing scientific application. It is free and open-source, released under the GPL license.
http://scigraphica.sourceforge.net/
--------------
Main features:
--------------
* You can plot functions and manipulate data in worksheets.
* You can open several worksheets and plots and work with them interactively and at the same time.
* The plots are fully configurable using a control panel dialog.
* The look and feel is completely WYSIWYG.
* Production/Publication quality PostScript output.
* You can interact with the plots double-clicking, dragging and moving objects with the mouse.
* Native XML file format.
* You can insert Python expressions in the worksheets.
* Terminal with command-line Python interface for interacting with plots and worksheets ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
It is completely programmed in C from scratch, using the GTK+ and GtkExtra libraries, and released under the GPL agreement.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The current release is 0.8.
An outline of the features that SciGraphica 1.0 will (hopefully) have (borrowed from Korigin).
* Data Types:
o Numeric
o Text
o Python expressions
o Date, Month, Day, Time
* Data Import:
o ASCII Tables in many variants
o Several spreadsheet formats
o Microcal Origin files (Origin format is propietary and this feature looks unreliable)
* Data Export:
o ASCII Tables
o HTML Tables
o TeX/LaTeX Tables
o Several spreadsheet formats
* Data Manipulation (most of this tasks are already doable using Scientific Python):
o Normalization
o Data sorting
o Calculations from data ("Set column values")
o Linear regression
o Polynominal, exponential, and "free" linear/non-linear fits
o Numerical Integration/differenciation
o Fourier analysis
o (Multiple) Gauss/Lorentz peak fitter
o Peak finder
o Constraints
o Statistics
* Command Shell:
o A Python interpreter with numerical extensions (Numpy, Scientific Python)
o Python bindings for SciGraphica library calls.
o Pluggin system using Python.
* Data Visualization:
o X/Y Plots
o Histograms
o Polar charts
o Contour Plots
o 3D Plots
o Bar charts
o Pie charts (out of scope)
o Embeding images. (Maybe after GTK-1.4/gdk-pixbuf)
* X-Y Plots:
o Scatter, Lines and H/V Bar charts
o H/V boxes, Bubbles, and Vectors
o Contour plots
o Functions
o Linear and Log scales
o Fully configurable axes
o Custom ticks labels
o Major, minor grids
o Legends
o Zoom in/out
o Autoscale
o Text
o Arrows , rectangles and ellipes.
o Drag and Drop plot objects
o PostScript export
* 3D Plots:
o Scatter and Lines
o Bubbles and Vectors
o Surfaces
o Contour plots
* Plot Layout:
o Multiple paper formats
o Arrangement of multiple plots on a page
o Layout templates (page templates)
------------- end of file -------------------------------------
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