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LabPlot: Free, open source and cross-platform Data Visualization and Analysis

255 points by turrini 1y ago

cl3misch 1y ago
HN hug of death?
givinguflac 1y ago
Pretty sure this is the project github: https://github.com/KDE/labplot https://github.com/KDE/labplot
- yonatan8070 1y ago
  I think that's just a GitHub mirror, the actual development is happening over at the KDE GitLab https://invent.kde.org/education/labplot https://invent.kde.org/education/labplot
  - givinguflac 1y ago
    Yep, thanks. It was down when I posted that.
RedShift1 1y ago
Unfortunately the only database it supports is SQLite, I really wanted to hook this up directly to a database or REST API. Going back and forth between exporting files and importing them into LabPlot is just too much work...
- kidloco 1y ago
  SQLite is great and there are a few 3rd party REST API solutions available. What's the problem?
  - esafak 1y ago
    Are you serious? "Why don't you copy your data into a new database just to visualize it?"
- mouz 1y ago
  The manual says otherwise: https://docs.labplot.org/en/import_export/import_export_sql.html https://docs.labplot.org/en/import_export/import_export_sql.... https://doc.qt.io/archives/qt-5.15/sql-driver.html https://doc.qt.io/archives/qt-5.15/sql-driver.html Are you talking about something else?
  - RedShift1 1y ago
    I installed it and the only choice I got for selecting a database was SQLite
    - ognarb 1y ago
      On linux, you are likely missing the db drivers for Qt for other database types.
      - RedShift1 1y ago
        I'm running it on Windows
jtrueb 1y ago
Obviously there is a lot of work here, but I am a bit confused. If you already have lab code in Julia, Matlab, R, Python, Excel, etc., what is the motivation to use this tool? Is this hot in a specific community?
- jabl 1y ago
  I suppose this is a FOSS solution for the roughly same space occupied by commercial tools like Origin, that are very popular in some scientific communities. They can be useful if you have other tools (e.g. measurement software) that already produces the data you want, and you just want a GUI tool to create plots, and maybe do some simple things like least squares curve fitting etc. If you already do a lot of data wrangling in something with a programming language and plotting libraries accessible from said language, like the ones you mention, yeah, this is not the tool for you.
  - ajot 1y ago
    It is! I remember using this (or SciDavis, a related project) a couple of years back in college. It was not as powerful as Origin 10 years ago, but it ran on Linux. This is great for people who don't know nor want to learn to program.
    - pvitz 1y ago
      Same experience here! We used Origin and/or QtiPlot in a physics lab for the graphs and quick regressions.
- tonyarkles 1y ago
  I'm in potentially the target demographic for this. I regularly bounce between R, Python, Maxima, and occasionally MATLAB/Octave. Passing data between these is usually done using the lowest common denominator: CSV. Having four completely different interfaces to these tools is a hassle. I'm also not a big fan of Jupyter and if this feels better for me it might be a decent Jupyter replacement even without the cross-language stuff.
ntxvega1975 1y ago
I can't tell what license is applicable.
- echoangle 1y ago
  On https://labplot.org/frequently-asked-questions/ https://labplot.org/frequently-asked-questions/ , under "Under what license is LabPlot released?", it says this: > LabPlot is licensed under GNU General Public License, version 2.0 or later, so to put it in a few sentences: > You are free to use LabPlot, for any purpose > You are free to distribute LabPlot > You can study how LabPlot works and change it > You can distribute changed versions of LabPlot > In the last case you have the obligation to also publish the changed source code as GPL.
coldcode 1y ago
It's so interesting to see how much of a commodity charting/graphing has become. When we started building Deltagraph in late 1988, what we made become a kind of standard since we targeted Postscript and Illustrator output, and included almost every kind of chart we could find with ridiculous options for everything, so people used it world wide, especially if targeting print. In the mid-90's, it was sold by the publisher (we just did the dev), and it spent the next 25 years at various owners before dying during the pandemic, all still based on the original source code (C) I started. I can't imagine how bad the code looked by then...
- dcreater 1y ago
  And yet it's still not sufficiently commoditized and widespread. The majority of the working force is using proprietary solutions that are out of date - Tableau, JMP in HW engineering, SAS and Excel
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
SubiculumCode 1y ago
Sure ggplot, for example, is finicky, and you need to fuss over it to get the look you are wanting, but then again, it is very flexible. Most of these solutions get frustrating as soon as you want to do, for example, spaghetti plots of within subject repeated measures using age (not time-point) of accelerated longitudinal design data, with fixed effect plots on top. e.g. this plot of mine [1] [1] https://imgur.com/a/gw2vV7w https://imgur.com/a/gw2vV7w
- nxobject 1y ago
  I just needed to stop and say: as a biostatistician, boy do I love a beautiful complex longitudinal design: I remember my old professor asking us how at this point we would decompose into cross-sectional and longitudinal effects, Lord's paradox, etc... and I still don't fully understand Lord's paradox as well as I should.
  - SubiculumCode 1y ago
    This is a very important idea. For example, one issue with accelerated longitudinal designs, see image [1], is that while they efficiently cover a larger age range, the fixed effects of age are largely driven by cross-sectional differences between who is samples are younger and older ages. One method that can be used to test whether the pattern seen in the fixed effects represents the pattern within subjects is to decompose within and between effects of age. For example, you can create a non-time-varying variable like age at first visit (starting_age), and then a within subject variable change in age since first visit, which would be zero at the first visit (age1-age1=0, age2-age1 for change of age between visit 2 and visit 1, age3-age1, for change in age between 3rd visit and first visit), calling it dage. Then in the mixed model, test for an interaction between starting_age:dage. If you have an interaction, then you know that the within subject effect of change in age is different depending on how old you were when you started. I got this from Lesa Hoffman's freely available lectures [2], particularly [3][4], and now I discovered she recently published [5], which I should read. [1] https://e-m-mccormick.github.io/static/longitudinal-primer/longitudinal_primer_files/figure-html/accelerated%2001-1.png https://e-m-mccormick.github.io/static/longitudinal-primer/l... [2] https://www.lesahoffman.com/ https://www.lesahoffman.com/ [3] https://www.lesahoffman.com/PSYC944/944_Lecture11_Alt_Time.pdf https://www.lesahoffman.com/PSYC944/944_Lecture11_Alt_Time.p... [4] https://www.lesahoffman.com/Workshops/SMiP_Presentation_June_2020.pdf https://www.lesahoffman.com/Workshops/SMiP_Presentation_June... [5] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00273171.2025.2519348?src= https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00273171.2025.2...
carelyair 1y ago
Would be really helpful to add support for access to S3 buckets and other clouds object store. Iceberg support would also be super helpful as it is gaining lots of traction.
wiradikusuma 1y ago
Is this like desktop version of Metabase/Superset?
tau255 1y ago
I used SciDavis a lot and before that tried QtiPlot. When I had a chance to I used Origin. SciDavis was clunky and had some issues (liked to crash) but it worked well enough for what I wanted. Had some problems with setting plots styles, maybe it was just me but it wasn't obvious how to copy style between plots. Tried LabPlot recently and had issues with csv import with datetime data not really recognising date and time series format even after using advanced import options and setting it myself manually. Tried to find some solutions, the LabPlot manual website is just a bunch of youtube videos [1]. That is really not helpful, I am not browsing manual to be forced to watch clips of what I already tried. Developers really need to think about making traditional manual. There is also a AlphaPlot, a more or less alive fork of SciDavis. Still have its own issues but still has the same issue with yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss.zzz dates. Other than that it is a useful bit of kit. But when I want to do some batch processing and generate multiple plots, automate and have it reproducible I go with gnuplot. The learning curve is steep, but after writing gnuplot scripts few time you just have a personal template and know relevant parts. It is really good. All in all I am glad there is an opensource movement in this area. It is always better to have more options. 1. https://docs.labplot.org/en/2D_plotting/2D_plotting_xycurve.html#how-to-make-a-line-plot https://docs.labplot.org/en/2D_plotting/2D_plotting_xycurve....
anigbrowl 1y ago
Looks cool, but I wish there was a section explaining 'here's why it's better than matplotlib or [other popular charting tools]'. I looked through the feature list but I didn't feel like mentally constructing a comparison matrix. I see lots of things to like about it, but I would really appreciate case studies or something to explain why I might want to invest time in learning this new thing.

255 points by turrini 1y ago

cl3misch 1y ago

HN hug of death?

givinguflac 1y ago

Pretty sure this is the project github: https://github.com/KDE/labplot https://github.com/KDE/labplot

yonatan8070 1y ago
I think that's just a GitHub mirror, the actual development is happening over at the KDE GitLab https://invent.kde.org/education/labplot https://invent.kde.org/education/labplot
- givinguflac 1y ago
  Yep, thanks. It was down when I posted that.

RedShift1 1y ago

Unfortunately the only database it supports is SQLite, I really wanted to hook this up directly to a database or REST API. Going back and forth between exporting files and importing them into LabPlot is just too much work...

kidloco 1y ago
SQLite is great and there are a few 3rd party REST API solutions available. What's the problem?
- esafak 1y ago
  Are you serious? "Why don't you copy your data into a new database just to visualize it?"
mouz 1y ago
The manual says otherwise: https://docs.labplot.org/en/import_export/import_export_sql.html https://docs.labplot.org/en/import_export/import_export_sql.... https://doc.qt.io/archives/qt-5.15/sql-driver.html https://doc.qt.io/archives/qt-5.15/sql-driver.html Are you talking about something else?
- RedShift1 1y ago
  I installed it and the only choice I got for selecting a database was SQLite
  - ognarb 1y ago
    On linux, you are likely missing the db drivers for Qt for other database types.
    - RedShift1 1y ago
      I'm running it on Windows

jtrueb 1y ago

Obviously there is a lot of work here, but I am a bit confused. If you already have lab code in Julia, Matlab, R, Python, Excel, etc., what is the motivation to use this tool? Is this hot in a specific community?

jabl 1y ago
I suppose this is a FOSS solution for the roughly same space occupied by commercial tools like Origin, that are very popular in some scientific communities. They can be useful if you have other tools (e.g. measurement software) that already produces the data you want, and you just want a GUI tool to create plots, and maybe do some simple things like least squares curve fitting etc. If you already do a lot of data wrangling in something with a programming language and plotting libraries accessible from said language, like the ones you mention, yeah, this is not the tool for you.
- ajot 1y ago
  It is! I remember using this (or SciDavis, a related project) a couple of years back in college. It was not as powerful as Origin 10 years ago, but it ran on Linux. This is great for people who don't know nor want to learn to program.
  - pvitz 1y ago
    Same experience here! We used Origin and/or QtiPlot in a physics lab for the graphs and quick regressions.
tonyarkles 1y ago
I'm in potentially the target demographic for this. I regularly bounce between R, Python, Maxima, and occasionally MATLAB/Octave. Passing data between these is usually done using the lowest common denominator: CSV. Having four completely different interfaces to these tools is a hassle. I'm also not a big fan of Jupyter and if this feels better for me it might be a decent Jupyter replacement even without the cross-language stuff.

ntxvega1975 1y ago

I can't tell what license is applicable.

echoangle 1y ago
On https://labplot.org/frequently-asked-questions/ https://labplot.org/frequently-asked-questions/ , under "Under what license is LabPlot released?", it says this: > LabPlot is licensed under GNU General Public License, version 2.0 or later, so to put it in a few sentences: > You are free to use LabPlot, for any purpose > You are free to distribute LabPlot > You can study how LabPlot works and change it > You can distribute changed versions of LabPlot > In the last case you have the obligation to also publish the changed source code as GPL.

coldcode 1y ago

It's so interesting to see how much of a commodity charting/graphing has become. When we started building Deltagraph in late 1988, what we made become a kind of standard since we targeted Postscript and Illustrator output, and included almost every kind of chart we could find with ridiculous options for everything, so people used it world wide, especially if targeting print. In the mid-90's, it was sold by the publisher (we just did the dev), and it spent the next 25 years at various owners before dying during the pandemic, all still based on the original source code (C) I started. I can't imagine how bad the code looked by then...

dcreater 1y ago
And yet it's still not sufficiently commoditized and widespread. The majority of the working force is using proprietary solutions that are out of date - Tableau, JMP in HW engineering, SAS and Excel

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

SubiculumCode 1y ago

Sure ggplot, for example, is finicky, and you need to fuss over it to get the look you are wanting, but then again, it is very flexible. Most of these solutions get frustrating as soon as you want to do, for example, spaghetti plots of within subject repeated measures using age (not time-point) of accelerated longitudinal design data, with fixed effect plots on top. e.g. this plot of mine [1] [1] https://imgur.com/a/gw2vV7w https://imgur.com/a/gw2vV7w

nxobject 1y ago
I just needed to stop and say: as a biostatistician, boy do I love a beautiful complex longitudinal design: I remember my old professor asking us how at this point we would decompose into cross-sectional and longitudinal effects, Lord's paradox, etc... and I still don't fully understand Lord's paradox as well as I should.
- SubiculumCode 1y ago
  This is a very important idea. For example, one issue with accelerated longitudinal designs, see image [1], is that while they efficiently cover a larger age range, the fixed effects of age are largely driven by cross-sectional differences between who is samples are younger and older ages. One method that can be used to test whether the pattern seen in the fixed effects represents the pattern within subjects is to decompose within and between effects of age. For example, you can create a non-time-varying variable like age at first visit (starting_age), and then a within subject variable change in age since first visit, which would be zero at the first visit (age1-age1=0, age2-age1 for change of age between visit 2 and visit 1, age3-age1, for change in age between 3rd visit and first visit), calling it dage. Then in the mixed model, test for an interaction between starting_age:dage. If you have an interaction, then you know that the within subject effect of change in age is different depending on how old you were when you started. I got this from Lesa Hoffman's freely available lectures [2], particularly [3][4], and now I discovered she recently published [5], which I should read. [1] https://e-m-mccormick.github.io/static/longitudinal-primer/longitudinal_primer_files/figure-html/accelerated%2001-1.png https://e-m-mccormick.github.io/static/longitudinal-primer/l... [2] https://www.lesahoffman.com/ https://www.lesahoffman.com/ [3] https://www.lesahoffman.com/PSYC944/944_Lecture11_Alt_Time.pdf https://www.lesahoffman.com/PSYC944/944_Lecture11_Alt_Time.p... [4] https://www.lesahoffman.com/Workshops/SMiP_Presentation_June_2020.pdf https://www.lesahoffman.com/Workshops/SMiP_Presentation_June... [5] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00273171.2025.2519348?src= https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00273171.2025.2...

carelyair 1y ago

Would be really helpful to add support for access to S3 buckets and other clouds object store. Iceberg support would also be super helpful as it is gaining lots of traction.

wiradikusuma 1y ago

Is this like desktop version of Metabase/Superset?

tau255 1y ago

I used SciDavis a lot and before that tried QtiPlot. When I had a chance to I used Origin. SciDavis was clunky and had some issues (liked to crash) but it worked well enough for what I wanted. Had some problems with setting plots styles, maybe it was just me but it wasn't obvious how to copy style between plots. Tried LabPlot recently and had issues with csv import with datetime data not really recognising date and time series format even after using advanced import options and setting it myself manually. Tried to find some solutions, the LabPlot manual website is just a bunch of youtube videos [1]. That is really not helpful, I am not browsing manual to be forced to watch clips of what I already tried. Developers really need to think about making traditional manual. There is also a AlphaPlot, a more or less alive fork of SciDavis. Still have its own issues but still has the same issue with yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss.zzz dates. Other than that it is a useful bit of kit. But when I want to do some batch processing and generate multiple plots, automate and have it reproducible I go with gnuplot. The learning curve is steep, but after writing gnuplot scripts few time you just have a personal template and know relevant parts. It is really good. All in all I am glad there is an opensource movement in this area. It is always better to have more options. 1. https://docs.labplot.org/en/2D_plotting/2D_plotting_xycurve.html#how-to-make-a-line-plot https://docs.labplot.org/en/2D_plotting/2D_plotting_xycurve....

anigbrowl 1y ago

Looks cool, but I wish there was a section explaining 'here's why it's better than matplotlib or [other popular charting tools]'. I looked through the feature list but I didn't feel like mentally constructing a comparison matrix. I see lots of things to like about it, but I would really appreciate case studies or something to explain why I might want to invest time in learning this new thing.