[OS X TeX] [Sort-of Off]: Plotting Software

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 7 mars 06 à 06:40, Adam R. Maxwell a écrit :

> On Mar 6, 2006, at 21:01, david craig wrote:
>
>> I hate to add this, but I'm especially interested in what free/gpl/ 
>> whatever type software might be a good choice for Windows, since  
>> that's what's in a lot of the student labs here.  (Cross platform  
>> file format would be keen, therefore, but not absolutely essential.)
>
> Igor and Matlab are cross-platform; Kaleidagraph may be, but I  
> haven't used it in years.

KaleidaGraph is not really a viable option in relation with TeX,  
given it still hasn't any EPS export facility, after so many years of  
existence.

It seems that KaleidaGraph hasn't really been developed since the  
mid-90s, and even then it wasn't very different from its ancestor  
Cricket Graph. Since then, my impression is that it has only got bug  
fixes, and adaptation to the evolution of the architecture (from  
68000 to PowerPC processors, and from Classic Mac OS to Mac OS X),  
but no real development. For example, it's still using its specific  
help-visualization add-on, and its interface hasn't changed in years.

People in my department have still using it, because they have been  
using it for years and haven't time to invest in learning a new piece  
of software, and also because they consider the alternatives (mostly  
Igor) too expensive; thus, I'm using it as well. But if you're  
starting from scratch, I wouldn't recommend it and would recommend  
Igor instead.

The above is about GUI-based plotting. But an increasing number of  
people at my department (of fluid mechanics) are using Matlab for  
about anything.

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