ART100@PSUVM.BITNET ("Andy Tefft 862-6728", 814) (11/16/88)
Recently I have been doing a number of graphs on this system here and have found a need to have a similar program for my //c. Nothing fancy, but some basic features are essential: ability to enter data as (x,y) pairs and have them plotted, or specify a function (actually specifying a function is not necessary if it can read a plain text file, since i can just write a quick applesoft prog. to write x,y pairs into a file). I have tried softgraph but it will only plot specific x values... for example if i have the data (1,1) (3,5) and (10,1) it will make the x-axis 1...3...10, evenly spaced (understand what i mean??) automatic and manual axis scaling, with options to plot only part of a range; axis labeling; choice of connecting points or making a scatter plot; log scales, or ability to enter axis labels manually (so for example i can just take the log of all the values and then put in labels for a pseudo-log scale) one nice feature which isn't necessary is ability to plot a smooth curve (probably difficult) given not too many points. this is handy but as i said not necessary (i could plot points and fill in the curve by hand); be shareware, freeware, or public domain (i am on a very limited budget) features which i do NOT need (so don't exclude anything because it doesn't have these): color, pie charts, bar graphs, rotation (ie plot it sideways), automatic labeling of axes with months or days. It would be handy if it would save the hi-res screen as a binary file. will apple plot do what i want?? (for those of you not familiar with this it is an OLD plotting program published by Apple) I have this at home but not here and I've never really tried to do this with it. I'll find out over Thanksgiving for sure. Thanks! Andy ART100@psuvm.bitnet or a1t@ecl.psu.edu or ...!psuvax1!psuhcx!a1t (3 different accounts)
dr@skivs.UUCP (David Robins) (11/18/88)
I've been using, very satisfactorily, two programs from Interactive Microware. Scientific Plotter Version II lets you plot x,y pairs, with or without error bars, or y values at a constant x interval. The axes are set by the user, there is no autoscaling, so if you plot different sets of data, they can be compared by looking at them. There is a variety of point styles to choose, and connected lines are optional. Axes can be labeled. Axes markings spacings are selected by the user. It saves the hi-res screen to disk for printing by a graphics program, or you can dump it if you have a Grappler or Pkaso card. PRICE IS $28 !!! Color plotter adaptations for pen plotters are available for $28 extra. For fitting curves to data, there is a separate Curve Fitter proram. It does autoscaling of axes, and fits 1-6th order curves, by least squares, or does interpolation using cubic spline, Stineman, or polunomial. Exponential and geometric fits are supported. PRICE IS $39 !!! Both programs save their data as text files, and you can import data from each other. Fitted curves can thus be overlaid on the data points in the Scientific Plotter program. Applesoft programs can write out data files in the format compatible with these plotter programs, for automatic entering. (Data can be entered from disk, keyboard, or sensor input by writing an Applesoft data subroutine into the program.) If you need a graphics dump program, they sell the Advanced GrafPak printer utility, from Smartware. This supports many printer cards and printers. Price is $35. They make similar products for the IBM's also. Interactive Microware, Inc. P.O. Box 139 State College, PA 16804-0139 814/238-8294 -- David Robins, M.D. (ophthalmologist / electronics engineer) The Smith-Kettlewell Institute of Visual Science, *** net: uunet!ski!dr 2232 Webster St, San Francisco CA 94115 *** 415/561-1705 (voice) The opinions expressed herein do not reflect the opinion of the Institute!