🚀 go-pugleaf

On 17 Nov 1998 20:04:28 GMT, plambert$1@plambert.org wrote:
>I need to generate pretty pictures from lists of numbers.  I'm using
>gnuplot, but I'm in a situation where glitz and fanciness are far more
>important than meaning.  Anyone know of any ways (from perl, preferrably,
>but I'll use _any_ tool) that'll make pretty pie charts and graphs that
>look like the crap that Excel and PowerPoint produce?

look around for "xmgr", stands for x motif graph, or something.

has both a command line, and graphical interface.

Kinda a pain to learn. but onceyou do, it can do a lot of stuff.


-- 
[trim the no-bots from my address to reply to me by email!]
 --------------------------------------------------
"initiating.. 'getting the hell out of here' maneouver" - Lennier, babylon5

phil.s2@bolthole.no-bots.com (Philip Brown) wrote:
| On 17 Nov 1998 20:04:28 GMT, plambert$1@plambert.org wrote:
| >I need to generate pretty pictures from lists of numbers.  I'm using
| >gnuplot, but I'm in a situation where glitz and fanciness are far more
| >important than meaning.  Anyone know of any ways (from perl, preferrably,
| >but I'll use _any_ tool) that'll make pretty pie charts and graphs that
| >look like the crap that Excel and PowerPoint produce?
| 
| look around for "xmgr", stands for x motif graph, or something.
| 
| has both a command line, and graphical interface.
| 
| Kinda a pain to learn. but onceyou do, it can do a lot of stuff.

FWIW, I just searched my local collection of archives and found a
reference to xmgr at ftp.x.org.  What I found was:

        .../contrib-OLD/acegr/xmgr-2.10.tar.gz

The "..." meaning I'm not sure of the directory "root", but they should
have a daily "ls-lR" file at their top level which can be searched.

Thad

Sorry for a stupid followup. I usually do that sort of stuff with postscript.
It ain't exactly the best language on Earth, but once you get to know
it, it gets kinda usefull.

plambert$1@plambert.org wrote:
> I need to generate pretty pictures from lists of numbers.  I'm using
> gnuplot, but I'm in a situation where glitz and fanciness are far more
> important than meaning.  Anyone know of any ways (from perl, preferrably,
> but I'll use _any_ tool) that'll make pretty pie charts and graphs that
> look like the crap that Excel and PowerPoint produce?
> 
> Also, I'm in the market for any graphic interface to gnuplot or
> similar packages, i.e. manipulating a graph with a gui to get specific
> results, instead of rewriting the commands that generated it repeatedly.
> (Since I am not expecting to find a better package, I figure I'll make
> the basic layout work a little simpler... ;-)
> 
> --Paul L.
> 
> 
> -- 
> And how do you know what you need to know?  Life has certain,
> shall we say, boundary problems....  -- Todd Michel McComb
> 


-- dima

Dima Ruban <dima@best.net> spewed:
> Sorry for a stupid followup. I usually do that sort of stuff with postscript.
> It ain't exactly the best language on Earth, but once you get to know
> it, it gets kinda usefull.

I would do it with postscript.  Unfortunately, I need to generate the
final graphs on-the-fly on a slow machine and serve them via http as
GIFs.

Ugh.

If I had time, I'd still do it in Postscript by throwing the data across
the notwork at my Ultra 30, crunching it there, and spewing the GIF back.

Of course, if I had time, I'd write a perl module to do all the graphing
I need and write directly to GIF.  ;-)

*sigh*

Well, I'm going to stick with gnuplot graphs, since the first presentation
is tomorrow morning (ugh).  I'm still looking for a replacement that I
can put in place by next month's presentation.

I even tried Excel (I have a Mac which I love, and it has Office 98, which
I never used.  So I sucked the data into Excel, figuring it could do
pretty graphs.  Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to get it to do
the data manipulation I really want it to do, and so it won't graph things
the way I'd like.  Otherwise, I'd install MacCron, make an AppleScript that
ftp'd the data to it, ran an Excel macro to make the graph, told
GraphicConverter to make it into a GIF, and ftp'd the GIF to the web
server.  But not by tomorrow.)

Excel sucks, by the way.  It does some very non-intuitive things, and
there are a great number of simple operations which are made terribly
complex for no apparent reason.  Glah.

OK, I'm done being depressed in public.  Now I have to make some pie
charts, play with the colors, and hit the road.

I think tomorrow, after the presentation, I'll play with my idea of a
Perl/Tk interface to GNUplot.  Should be straightforward enough that
I can get it to work, and then post it for someone smarter than me to
patch and update until it's actually useful.

Or I might go home and nap.

Bye, y'all, and thanks mightily for the suggestions!

--Paul L.

-- 
And how do you know what you need to know?  Life has certain,
shall we say, boundary problems....  -- Todd Michel McComb

 <plambert$1@plambert.org> wrote:
>
>I would do it with postscript.  Unfortunately, I need to generate the
>final graphs on-the-fly on a slow machine and serve them via http as
>GIFs.

Well, if you *are* willing to draw the graph elements yourself (as
you'd have to in PS), consider using Tom Boutell's gd, either the C
library or GD.pm. I've used GD to generate bar charts and pie charts
and it works pretty well.  Of course, you have to deal with stuff like
particularly annoying stuff like axis scaling and labelling yourself,
but you get to very precisely control the look of the output.

But the biggest problem it has is really crappy text.  I had to hack
the version I use to do proportionally spaced fonts (times).  (But
it's an ugly, ugly hack.)

>OK, I'm done being depressed in public.  Now I have to make some pie
>charts, play with the colors, and hit the road.

Good luck!

Jason.
-- 
 Jason Campbell              preferred email: jasonc aht introrse dawt kahm