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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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Le_Forgeron <lef### [at] free fr> wrote:
> Le 14/02/2011 16:38, Invisible a écrit :
> > On 14/02/2011 03:17 PM, Warp wrote:
> >
> >> You know what they say about opinions...
> >
> > They're like onions?
> >
> > No, wait, that's ogres...
>
> IIRC, opinions are like a**h*l*s... everybody get one...
Opinions are like anthills?
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Invisible wrote:
> The list at the top of the page indicates that this doesn't include md5sum.
Sorry. It was in my history, and I'd recently (like 2 weeks ago) downloaded
an md5sum.exe that works fine, so I thought that's where I got it. Generally
speaking, "gnu win32" is an excellent pair of keywords for google to find
such stuff. Does the attached work for you?
> Most CAS systems I've seen are hard-wired for algebra, and many of them
> have the transformation rules hard-wired as well. Mathematica is more
> general than that.
I see what you mean, yes.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"How did he die?" "He got shot in the hand."
"That was fatal?"
"He was holding a live grenade at the time."
Post a reply to this message
Attachments:
Download 'md5sum.exe.dat' (28 KB)
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Am Thu, 17 Feb 2011 09:22:07 +0000 schrieb Invisible:
> 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?)
>
Well, right tool for the right job...
> As soon as you want to do anything even moderately complex, it becomes
> an utter nightmare. The documentation is minimal to say the least.
Nah - the build in help covers everything, but I give you that some stuff
is really hard to find.
> 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.
I don't know what exactly you want to do, but googling for "recurrence
relation gnuplot" came up with this nice mandelbrot fractal:
http://t16web.lanl.gov/Kawano/gnuplot/fractal/mandelbrot-e.html
That's already a quite old version of povray and I guess you can do more
stuff with newer versions - I think the most difficult part is telling
gnuplot what you want to do.
But I guess the stuff gnuplot is really good at is plotting data
(experimental results or computer simulation results) and it does a good
job at this. Usually we write the program putting out data ourself, so if
gnuplot likes spaces instead of commas as separator its usually not a big
deal (And then there is awk and such stuff ;)). It is not made for the
data processing itself, that is usually done outside of gnuplot (even
though you can hack quite some stuff in it).
>
> Now, if only it would support CSV input... You know, the de facto file
> format for all numerical data? Yeah. :-P
I think it does? See
http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/docs_4.2/node173.html
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>> 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
>
> Well, right tool for the right job...
It also can do certain types of plot that Excel can't do at all. On the
other hand, with Excel, if I want to change the font size of the X-axis
labels, I just right-click it and press "format". Good luck finding out
how to do that in GNUplot (or even *if* you can do that in GNUplot - it
varies by OS and output target!)
> Nah - the build in help covers everything, but I give you that some stuff
> is really hard to find.
Really *really* hard to find, yes.
>> 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.
>
> I don't know what exactly you want to do, but googling for "recurrence
> relation gnuplot" came up with this nice mandelbrot fractal:
>
> http://t16web.lanl.gov/Kawano/gnuplot/fractal/mandelbrot-e.html
I have literally no idea how that's possible.
> That's already a quite old version of povray
Uh... POV-Ray?
> But I guess the stuff gnuplot is really good at is plotting data
Yes, that's really its design purpose.
Of course, the fact that this data was to be in THE EXACT RIGHT FORMAT
or it refuses to plot anything isn't very helpful.
>> Now, if only it would support CSV input... You know, the de facto file
>> format for all numerical data? Yeah. :-P
>
> I think it does? See
>
> http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/docs_4.2/node173.html
All these years I've been using GNUplot and I've never once been able to
make it plot any data from an external source. (That should tell you how
good the documentation is...)
OK, so that's how you tell it to load CSV. Now how do you specify which
columns to plot?
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On 2/16/2011 10:20 AM, Invisible wrote:
>
> There's a reason most people don't write assembly any more.
>
It's called pipelined instructions with multiple simultaneous units that
require operations in a certain order in order to be most efficient, and
sometimes even a strategic NOP just to get the instructions to pipe
properly. A compiler is faster at implementing these rules than a person.
--
~Mike
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>> There's a reason most people don't write assembly any more.
>
> It's called pipelined instructions with multiple simultaneous units that
> require operations in a certain order in order to be most efficient, and
> sometimes even a strategic NOP just to get the instructions to pipe
> properly. A compiler is faster at implementing these rules than a person.
This only matters if you're interested in performance.
If you're interested in reliability and maintainability, there's the
fact that there is almost no machinery to stop you shooting yourself in
the foot.
If you're interested in portability...
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On 2/17/2011 3:15 AM, Invisible wrote:
>
> Most CAS systems I've seen are hard-wired for algebra, and many of them
> have the transformation rules hard-wired as well. Mathematica is more
> general than that.
Underneath it all, Maxima is similar. Its all symbolic. Certain things
have certain meanings. All functionality and rules are defined in
libraries, it has a standard set that it loads when started that gives
pretty standard algebra and calculus. Depending on how far down the
rabbit hole you want to go, you can even from the Maxima command line
give it instructions in Lisp.
--
~Mike
Post a reply to this message
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>> Most CAS systems I've seen are hard-wired for algebra, and many of them
>> have the transformation rules hard-wired as well. Mathematica is more
>> general than that.
>
> Underneath it all, Maxima is similar. Its all symbolic. Certain things
> have certain meanings. All functionality and rules are defined in
> libraries, it has a standard set that it loads when started that gives
> pretty standard algebra and calculus. Depending on how far down the
> rabbit hole you want to go, you can even from the Maxima command line
> give it instructions in Lisp.
Many of these CAS programs have a parser written in C that snips up text
and turns it into internal data structures. Then other C code does
algebraic transformations such as collecting like terms and so forth. If
you want to input something that isn't algebra, or expressions in a
non-associative algebra... sorry, you can't do that.
Mathematica doesn't work this way. The core implements a transformation
engine, and arbitrary precision math. Beyond that, the parser, the
printer, the simplification rules, *everything* is Mathematica source
code, which can be altered at will (if you're so-inclined).
I have no idea about the architecture of Maxima, but it wouldn't
surprise me. There are advantages to doing it this way. (The main
disadvantage is performance...)
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On 2/18/2011 8:16 AM, Invisible wrote:
>
> This only matters if you're interested in performance.
>
Why else would you use assembly?
> If you're interested in reliability and maintainability, there's the
> fact that there is almost no machinery to stop you shooting yourself in
> the foot.
>
There are plenty of languages that allow better maintainability.
> If you're interested in portability...
Assembly isn't portable by its very nature ;)
--
~Mike
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