Re: octave graphical output question

[Przemek Klosowski]

The best approach might depend on your specific requirements. Do you need:

 1) any amount of calculation and post-processing on your
    output data before it can be plotted?

 2) batch processing of many similar datasets, or is it
    rather a small number of highly customized plots?

 3) high quality output, e.g. nice fonts, custom annotations, etc.?

Octave is a very good candidate if the answers are
{yes,batch,no}---you would read the data into octave arrays, do the
math, and then 'plot(x,y)', presumably using the PostScript output
driver. This method uses the default plotting method in Octave, which
is Gnuplot; see http://www.gnuplot.info for examples of
Gnuplot-generated plots.

If you don't need to do math on your output, you could cut out the 
Octave and do the plots directly in Gnuplot.

On the other hand, if you don't need math, and plan to do few highly
customized plots,  perhaps a GUI, direct-manipulation program like
GRACE is better:

      http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/gallery/reciprocal.png



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