Plotutils
| Developer(s) | GNU Project |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 2.5
/ December 2005 |
| Operating system | Multi-platform |
| License | GNU General Public License |
| Website | Official website |
Plotutils is a opensource package consists of commandline tools and software libraries for exporting 2D vector graphics in many file formats. It is maintained by the GNU Project and is licensed under the GPL. It is used in projects such as PSPP and UMLgraph, and is included in many Linux distributions such as debian[1] and cygwin. Windows and Mac OS X versions are also available for each (see External Links). The library provides bindings for the C and C++ languages. It also provides stand alone tools for generating graphs and numerical calculation of spline curves and systems of ordinary differential equations.
Features
Supported output formats
- X Window System display
- SVG
- PNG
- PNM
- pseudo-GIF (using run-length encoding rather than LZW to avoid the past patent issue)
- WebCGM
- Adobe Illustrator
- PostScript
- PCL
- HP-GL
- xfig
Stand alone tools
- GNU graph, which plots 2-D datasets or data streams in real time.
- GNU plot, which translates GNU Metafile format to any of the other formats.
- GNU tek2plot, for translating Tektronix data to any of the above formats.
- GNU pic2plot, for translating the pic language to any of the above formats.
- GNU plotfont, for displaying character maps of the fonts that are available in the above formats.
- GNU spline, which does spline interpolation of data.
- GNU ode, which numerically integrates a system consisting of one or more ordinary differential equations.
History
Several utilities were inspired by Unix plotting utilities. A graph utility and various plot filters were present in the first releases of Unix from Bell Laboratories. By the time of Version 7 Unix, `graph', `plot', `spline', and several device-dependent versions of `libplot' were a standard Unix features. The first display device supported by the package was a Tektronix 611 storage scope. By the early 1980's, numerous other devices were supported.
In 1989, the first GNU versions of `graph', `plot', `tek2plot', `spline' and their respective documentation were written. Richard Stallman further directed development of the programs and documentation. The distribution, as it stood in 1991, was distributed under the name `GNU graphics'.
In 1995 the package was significantly expanded by writing a device-independent, standalone version of `libplot', and by rewriting `graph' from scratch, turning it into a real-time filter.
See also
- GNU Project
- gnuplot (not part of the GNU project).
External links
- Official website
- plotutils for Windows
- Plotutils version 2.5.1 - How to Download and Install on Mac OS X
- UMLgraph Automated Drawing of UML Diagrams
- plotutils in the current release of cygwin