[comp.windows.x] Graphical Widgets ??

david@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (David E. Smyth) (11/29/89)

Has anybody developed graphical widgets for displaying
(any form of) data in the following ways:

1)	Strip chart, sorta like xload but more general.
2)	Line, bar, pie, whatever based on 2D and 3D data.
3)	Spectrogram, 3D data with one dimension using color.
4)	Dials or other indicators which are data driven
	sorta like TAE, but pure widgets.
5)	???  I'm open to ideas!

We got the XDataSlice and XImage stuff from zaphod.ncsa.uiuc.edu
last summer following Xhibition.  Great stuff!  But that machine
seems to have gone away.  Anybody know of a new name for the
NCSA public domain software ftp server?

keith@csli.Stanford.EDU (Keith Nishihara) (11/29/89)

david@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (David E. Smyth) writes:

>We got the XDataSlice and XImage stuff from zaphod.ncsa.uiuc.edu
>last summer following Xhibition.  Great stuff!  But that machine
>seems to have gone away.  Anybody know of a new name for the
>NCSA public domain software ftp server?

ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu

Neil/.		Neil%teleos.com@ai.sri.com	...decwrl!argosy!teleos!neil

f
i
l
l
e
r

AIN14924@merrimack.edu (Michael P. Gerlek) (11/29/89)

In article <6508@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>, david@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (David E. Smyth) writes:
> Has anybody developed graphical widgets for displaying
> (any form of) data in the following ways:
> 
> 1)	Strip chart, sorta like xload but more general.
> 2)	Line, bar, pie, whatever based on 2D and 3D data.
> 3)	Spectrogram, 3D data with one dimension using color.
> 4)	Dials or other indicators which are data driven
> 	sorta like TAE, but pure widgets.
> 5)	???  I'm open to ideas!

This question pops up about every other month.
And aside from the GraphWidget by a couple of guys from CalTech
[available from expo] which they admit is a kludge, the answer
is still "no", as far as I know... :-(

How come no one (the Athena folks, HP, etc) has yet made a
generic graph widget?

[  M.P.Gerlek, Wanna-Be At Large             "But Mommy,         ]
[  Merrimack College                            I don't WANT a   ]
[  easy: mpg@merrimack.edu                        REAL job!"     ]
[  hard: {uunet,bbn,ulowell}!samsung!hubdub!mpg                  ]

davidh@dent.Berkeley.EDU (David S. Harrison) (11/30/89)

In article <13451@merrimack.edu>, AIN14924@merrimack.edu (Michael P.
Gerlek) writes:
> In article <6508@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>,
david@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (David E. Smyth) writes:
> > Has anybody developed graphical widgets for displaying
> > (any form of) data in the following ways:
> > 
> > 1)	Strip chart, sorta like xload but more general.
> > 2)	Line, bar, pie, whatever based on 2D and 3D data.
> > 3)	Spectrogram, 3D data with one dimension using color.
> > 4)	Dials or other indicators which are data driven
> > 	sorta like TAE, but pure widgets.
> > 5)	???  I'm open to ideas!
> 
> This question pops up about every other month.
> And aside from the GraphWidget by a couple of guys from CalTech
> [available from expo] which they admit is a kludge, the answer
> is still "no", as far as I know... :-(

Xgraph is a program for displaying two dimensional line graphs,
scatter plots, and (limited) bar graphs.  It is not a widget (it
is a stand-alone program written at the Xlib level) but has nonetheless
gathered quite a following.

For those familiar with xgraph, I am working on a new version
that permits discontinuous data in each data set, allows users
to specify most graphing options in data files, and is more forgiving
about fonts and screens.  I plan to make it available just after
release 4 of X11 (so that I can test it out and make sure it works
under the new and old releases).  Suggestions are always welcome.

Below is the announcement I posted some months ago when I first
released the X11 version of xgraph:

-------

Xgraph for X11 is now available.  This program is a port of the
popular 2-dimensional plotting program orginally developed under
X10.  In almost all respects,  this program is compatible with
the older xgraph.

This program is NOT a widget.  Like its predecessor,  it is a 
stand-alone program that accepts input in a graph-like format
and plots the data on an X11 screen.  Scatter plots and a limited
form of bar graph plotting is also possible.  Zooming in on regions
of a graph is supported.  This version also includes much improved
support for generating hardcopy graphs to Postscript printers
and HPGL plotters.

The source for the program is available through anonymous ftp to
shambhala.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.132.54):

	% ftp shambhala.Berkeley.EDU
	Name: anonymous
	Password: <anything non-null>
	ftp> cd pub
	ftp> binary
	ftp> get xgraph-11.tar.Z
	ftp> quit
	% uncompress xgraph-11.tar.Z
	% tar xf xgraph-11.tar

This will create a directory called xgraph-11.  In that directory
you will find a file called README.INSTALL that contains directions
for building the program.  The source has also been submitted to the 
moderator of comp.sources.x in shar format.

Please send all bug reports, questions, comments or suggestions to
the electronic address below.

			David Harrison
			UC Berkeley Electronics Research Lab
			(davidh@ic.Berkeley.EDU, ...!ucbvax!ucbcad!davidh)