Re: Scientific Graphing, R and Perl

[toma]

R graphics are nice but in my experience take too much work to get to publication quality. I greatly prefer PGPLOT, which has wonderful graphics, many output devices, and an excellent perl integration. It handles log axes, polar, smith charts, etc. It works with both vector and bitmap data.

Many of the PGPLOT output devices require installation and configuration of other packages, so the dependencies can get quite complex. The trick is to install it first with just XSERVE and then only add the other output drivers that you really need. It has a TeX output driver, so it should work easily with LaTeX.

Another tip for installing PGPLOT is to use the default installation locations, typically /usr/local. I'm sure that it can be configured to work elsewhere, but I had trouble making all the integrations to other languages work outside of /usr/local.

It should work perfectly the first time! - toma