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How widely used is Gnuplot these days? In my community (statistics), I haven't heard of anyone using it at all, just people using Matplotlib, ggplot2, or R base

How widely used is Gnuplot these days? In my community (statistics), I haven't heard of anyone using it at all, just people using Matplotlib, ggplot2, or R base graphics. I used Gnuplot five or ten years ago when I barely knew of anything else, but I don't have a sense of what its advantages are these days.

raziel2701 10y ago
I was wondering the exact same thing. I'm in condensed matter and gnuplot is seen as a relic more than anything else. Most people in my field use origin, matlab or python.
- 77pt77 10y ago
  >Most people in my field use origin I'm surprised origin is still used. I used it some 20 years ago.
- TZVdosOWs3kZHus 10y ago
  Matlab uses Gnuplot.
  - kgwgk 10y ago
    What do you mean?
    - TZVdosOWs3kZHus 10y ago
      My mistake, they only share some syntax.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
dima55 10y ago
I use gnuplot heavily. It was good 20 years ago, and it's good today. The problem with people rewriting the wheel, is that every new wheel misses lots of features from the tool they're trying to replace, and does many things differently for no good reason. The efforts of the matlotlib, ggplot2 (and so on) would have been much more usefully spent contributing to gnuplot. Instead we have a large number of half-assed tools instead of 1 truly great one.
- cvwright 10y ago
  I guess I have to disagree. > It was good 20 years ago, and it's good today. I wasn't using such things 20 years ago, but 10 years ago gnuplot was a crufty relic and a right pain in the bum to use for anything beyond the most basic of plots. Together with LaTeX, it was one of the things that made getting into CS research much more difficult than necessary. We need fewer barriers to entry in this field, not more. Also, a fun fact: gnuplot is not GNU. It has this weird custom license that disallows distribution of modified versions and is incompatible with the GPL. http://gnuplot.cvs.sourceforge.net/gnuplot/gnuplot/Copyright?view=markup http://gnuplot.cvs.sourceforge.net/gnuplot/gnuplot/Copyright... I used to wonder how something so old could be so bad, and how newer projects like matplotlib managed to race ahead of it. I think the license explains a lot. Edit: I should add - if gnuplot works for you, more power to you! Use what works. But I've been much happier since I discovered matplotlib in about 2006.
  - dima55 10y ago
    You can distribute the modifications in patches; i.e. what all the distros already do anyway. As for matplotlib, there's no reason at all for it to be making plots. It just needed to provide a plotting interface to numpy, and the backend is almost irrelevant. They could EASILY have reused existing tools for the backend, and contributed upstream to fix whatever deficiencies they thought existed.
    - jofer 10y ago
      No. The whole point of matplotlib is interactivity and embedability in GUI toolkits. There was nothing else that meet those criteria in Python at the time, and the other options were GUI toolkit specific. Try finding something else that you can seamlessly embed in Tk, Gtk, Qt, Wx, etc with full interactivity that still creates publication quality static plots.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - 10y ago
enriquto 10y ago
I use it daily for my work. It fits much better in the unix environment than other tools,
- TZVdosOWs3kZHus 10y ago
  Me too. When you start handling huge amounts of data, Gnuplot starts to warm up where other tools break. It is fast as hell.
  - keenerd 10y ago
    Gnuplot dies when fed hundreds of megabytes of data. At some point you have to start making your own tools. Here's an example: http://kmkeen.com/rtl-power/tholin_rtlsdr.png http://kmkeen.com/rtl-power/tholin_rtlsdr.png Every pixel is a datapoint. There are only 1.5M values in that render (3-tuples of time, frequency and intensity) but the resolution of that chart is pretty low. People casually do charts a hundred times larger. Then you start running into other problems, like sharing the images. Firefox won't display images wider/taller than 32k px for example.
    - dman 10y ago
      What tool is used for this?
    - 1_player 10y ago
      Hey that's a really interesting chart! Do you mind if I post it on /r/dataisbeautiful ? Is there an accompanying article?
arnsholt 10y ago
I've used it for all the plots in my thesis. AFAIK, it's the only plotting library that does what gnuplot's epslatex terminal does: graphical elements are placed in an EPS file, while textual elements are placed as TeX, letting me have exactly the same fonts and sizes in the plots and in the rest of the thesis.
- TZVdosOWs3kZHus 10y ago
  The possibility of making later (small) adjustments in the tex-file is one huge advantage.
jabl 10y ago
Same here. I was a somewhat heavy user of gnuplot and Grace (http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/ http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/ , anybody remember that one, heh?), but what caused me to abandon them was that I needed much more than a plotting program. I made myself a python-based workflow/analysis environment, where I slurped in the results of simulations, did various munging on the data, some (somewhat custom) regression fits, generation of input data to other simulations etc. And yes, on-screen and later on publication quality plots too. matplotlib was a godsend here, really. Sure, I could have coded up some gnuplot/grace interface (say, generate input files and shelling out to the program), but, ugh, why?
julienchastang 10y ago
I really like gnuplot as a nice, lightweight alternative to matplotlib. Plus, it has great emacs, org-mode, babel integration. gnuplotting is an impressive resource and I had no idea plots could get so sophisticated with different earth projections, for example.

raziel2701 10y ago

I was wondering the exact same thing. I'm in condensed matter and gnuplot is seen as a relic more than anything else. Most people in my field use origin, matlab or python.

77pt77 10y ago
>Most people in my field use origin I'm surprised origin is still used. I used it some 20 years ago.
TZVdosOWs3kZHus 10y ago
Matlab uses Gnuplot.
- kgwgk 10y ago
  What do you mean?
  - TZVdosOWs3kZHus 10y ago
    My mistake, they only share some syntax.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

dima55 10y ago

I use gnuplot heavily. It was good 20 years ago, and it's good today. The problem with people rewriting the wheel, is that every new wheel misses lots of features from the tool they're trying to replace, and does many things differently for no good reason. The efforts of the matlotlib, ggplot2 (and so on) would have been much more usefully spent contributing to gnuplot. Instead we have a large number of half-assed tools instead of 1 truly great one.

cvwright 10y ago
I guess I have to disagree. > It was good 20 years ago, and it's good today. I wasn't using such things 20 years ago, but 10 years ago gnuplot was a crufty relic and a right pain in the bum to use for anything beyond the most basic of plots. Together with LaTeX, it was one of the things that made getting into CS research much more difficult than necessary. We need fewer barriers to entry in this field, not more. Also, a fun fact: gnuplot is not GNU. It has this weird custom license that disallows distribution of modified versions and is incompatible with the GPL. http://gnuplot.cvs.sourceforge.net/gnuplot/gnuplot/Copyright?view=markup http://gnuplot.cvs.sourceforge.net/gnuplot/gnuplot/Copyright... I used to wonder how something so old could be so bad, and how newer projects like matplotlib managed to race ahead of it. I think the license explains a lot. Edit: I should add - if gnuplot works for you, more power to you! Use what works. But I've been much happier since I discovered matplotlib in about 2006.
- dima55 10y ago
  You can distribute the modifications in patches; i.e. what all the distros already do anyway. As for matplotlib, there's no reason at all for it to be making plots. It just needed to provide a plotting interface to numpy, and the backend is almost irrelevant. They could EASILY have reused existing tools for the backend, and contributed upstream to fix whatever deficiencies they thought existed.
  - jofer 10y ago
    No. The whole point of matplotlib is interactivity and embedability in GUI toolkits. There was nothing else that meet those criteria in Python at the time, and the other options were GUI toolkit specific. Try finding something else that you can seamlessly embed in Tk, Gtk, Qt, Wx, etc with full interactivity that still creates publication quality static plots.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - 10y ago

enriquto 10y ago

I use it daily for my work. It fits much better in the unix environment than other tools,

TZVdosOWs3kZHus 10y ago
Me too. When you start handling huge amounts of data, Gnuplot starts to warm up where other tools break. It is fast as hell.
- keenerd 10y ago
  Gnuplot dies when fed hundreds of megabytes of data. At some point you have to start making your own tools. Here's an example: http://kmkeen.com/rtl-power/tholin_rtlsdr.png http://kmkeen.com/rtl-power/tholin_rtlsdr.png Every pixel is a datapoint. There are only 1.5M values in that render (3-tuples of time, frequency and intensity) but the resolution of that chart is pretty low. People casually do charts a hundred times larger. Then you start running into other problems, like sharing the images. Firefox won't display images wider/taller than 32k px for example.
  - dman 10y ago
    What tool is used for this?
  - 1_player 10y ago
    Hey that's a really interesting chart! Do you mind if I post it on /r/dataisbeautiful ? Is there an accompanying article?

arnsholt 10y ago

I've used it for all the plots in my thesis. AFAIK, it's the only plotting library that does what gnuplot's epslatex terminal does: graphical elements are placed in an EPS file, while textual elements are placed as TeX, letting me have exactly the same fonts and sizes in the plots and in the rest of the thesis.

TZVdosOWs3kZHus 10y ago
The possibility of making later (small) adjustments in the tex-file is one huge advantage.

jabl 10y ago

Same here. I was a somewhat heavy user of gnuplot and Grace (http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/ http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/ , anybody remember that one, heh?), but what caused me to abandon them was that I needed much more than a plotting program. I made myself a python-based workflow/analysis environment, where I slurped in the results of simulations, did various munging on the data, some (somewhat custom) regression fits, generation of input data to other simulations etc. And yes, on-screen and later on publication quality plots too. matplotlib was a godsend here, really. Sure, I could have coded up some gnuplot/grace interface (say, generate input files and shelling out to the program), but, ugh, why?

julienchastang 10y ago

I really like gnuplot as a nice, lightweight alternative to matplotlib. Plus, it has great emacs, org-mode, babel integration. gnuplotting is an impressive resource and I had no idea plots could get so sophisticated with different earth projections, for example.