[lug] Getting frustrated with gnuplot

[Daniel Webb]

On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 03:45:11PM -0600, Daniel Webb wrote:

> I have not seen even one superior quality plot package that is free as in
> speech.  

I should caveat that.  Several of the advanced data visualization tools such
as OpenDX appear to be professional quality, because several of them are
government or commercial products that were open-sourced.  But out of all
those, the screenshots always seem to show incredibly complex color
visualizations.  I just want some black and white data plots for my journal
publications.  I want to take a data file, create a simple m4 or other
preprocessing script, a simple plot specification file, and have a Latex plot
spit out.  Like with gnuplot, except with better 3D abilities.  With the "data
visualization" packages such as OpenDX, I can't tell if I could do that or
not, and how many days or weeks it would take me to learn it.

I assume Matlab can do it, and assume that's the easiest solution if I have to
go non-free.