From octave-sources-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Wed Jul 29 17:27:51 1998
Subject: RE: plot function using grace
From: (Ted Harding) <Ted dot Harding at nessie dot mcc dot ac dot uk>
To: octave-sources at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 23:28:04 +0100 (BST)

On 29-Jul-98 Jean-Marc.Valin wrote:
> I have just completed a set of "almost Matlab-compatible" plot functions 
> that use grace (previously known as xmgr or ACE/GR) instead of gnuplot, 
> and produces publishable-quality plots.
> 
> All those functions have the same name as the original function, except 
> of the prefix "xm". I'm new to octave, so the code could probably be much 
> cleaner. The .m files are tgzipped in attachment.
> 
> The grace (which is GPL) can be obtained at: 
> ftp://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/pub/grace/

Thanks to Jean-Marc and to Piergiorgio Svaizer for their helpful hints in
getting grace to work.

If you want to pull the precompiled Linux binaries, be warned that from this
site you should get both

pub/grace/bin/all/grace-5.0.0-ix86-pc-linux-libc5.tar.gz
and
pub/grace/bin/all/grace-5.0.0-common.tar.gz

(the former will not work without the latter).

I haven't given Jean-Marc's octave wrappers a proper try yet, but I am quite
impressed with grace (try out the "dotest" script in the grace/examples
directory which unpacks from grace-5.0.0-common.tar.gz). In particular
it seems that grace allows dynamic graphs by accepting input through a pipe, a
feature which octave has hitherto much suffered from the lack of (PlotMTV,
which I have often used instead of gnuplot with octave, also suffers from the
lack of a pipe capability).

Although you can iteract with a grace graph using the mouse, I have yet to suss
out whether you can use the mouse to generate input to a program from the graph
(e.g. by inputting the coordinates of a point using the mouse, or selecting a
region of the graph for octave to process separately, etc., MatLab "ginput"
style).

This looks like a promising candidate for the long-awaited substitute for
gnuplot!

Best wishes to all,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted dot Harding at nessie dot mcc dot ac dot uk>
Date: 29-Jul-98                                       Time: 23:28:04
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