On 16/02/2011 10:39 PM, Florian Pesth wrote:

> As a sideremark - the gnu in gnuplot is not from GNU as in "GNU is not
> Unix" but it is totally independent from the GNU project (originally it
> was called newplot).

OK.

> I kind of like it, but than I'm the kind of
> scientist it was written for. I would yet have to find a program having
> as nice LaTeX pstricks output and being easily scriptable. I agree the
> syntax is kind of clumsy but I probably would have come up with something
> similar would I have written such program :).

It's nice that you can load it up and say "plot exp(-x**2)" and it 
immediately plots something. (The alternative being to open Excel, make 
an X column, fill it with suitable values, write the formula into a 
cell, copy it down, select the column, run the chart wizard... are you 
bored yet?)

As soon as you want to do anything even moderately complex, it becomes 
an utter nightmare. The documentation is minimal to say the least. The 
properties have utterly unintuitive names and no logical grouping. And 
half the time it seems to be actually impossible to make it plot the way 
you want it to.

On top of that, while the expression language is great for plotting 
explicit functions, it's useless for plotting anything else. Even 
something as trivial as a recurrence relation is beyond its power.

Now, if only it would support CSV input... You know, the de facto file 
format for all numerical data? Yeah. :-P

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