Scientific plotting on Mac OS X - Could someone tell me why they use SM?
July 17th, 2007 by Marcos
So, I admit I only recently installed SM(supermongo), and only have used it slightly. Between IDL, grace(installable via Fink or there are binaries for MacOS X at the HPC site), and Plot, I just don’t see why any Mac user would make plots in SM. It requires gnuplot-esque scripts/programs, and just seems in general a pain and esoteric.
Perhaps it is powerful, perhaps for automated plot creation from certain kinds of data, it’s great, but I don’t understand its popularity. Has anyone used all the above tools and yet prefers SM? If so, please post a comment. I’m curious if I’m missing something.
For casual plotting, say from analysis that I do in IDL, I just do quick plots in IDL itself, and I’ve written a fair number of simple IDL routines that call plot or ploterr or other people’s plotting programs. This works for day to day plotting, and is easy to integrate into my other IDL programs. For almost all plots for publication, I have always used the aforementioned grace, which I installed with Fink.
If if I wasn’t already familiar with grace, I’d probably try this unfortunately under-named program, Plot. It seems pretty good, but since it’s very similar to Grace except with all the options in different places, so I’ve just stayed with the familiar Grace. But, I vastly prefer a graphical interface like this for tweaking than altering parameters via some script. I have also used gnuplot. It was a nightmare. I recreated in grace in one hour what it took days to get gnuplot to do, and do poorly. I abandoned gnuplot as a first year grad student.
Anyway, I know sm must have its fans, so if that’s you, let me know why you like it below. But, please note if you’ve used any other plotting program.
Update I’m baffled by the “something else entirely” winning unless it’s non-astronomers voting for Excel. Whatever you are voting for, could you post a comment and tell me? Also, I recently got a new Macbook, and installing Grace via Fink was a royal pain requiring a selfupdate via rsync and then a very long compile-fest because they don’t have a binary available. It’s hard to recommend with all that pain, but I maintain it’s much better than SM.
Update II Ploticus sounds vaguely familiar (see in the comments), but not so much python/matplotlib. These sound like IDL/SMish sort of plotting though. Personally, I still prefer a GUI - hence my like for xmgr Grace.
Update III I certainly get the desire to have a plot automagically made while one is doing data reduction, analysis, etc. This is one reason I like IDL. However, I prefer to be able to finely tune the appearance in a GUI for a plot designed for publication. I suppose it’s a learning curve thing. Granted, once you write one sm script to plot a spectra … you’re set for all other spectra. However, I’m not convinced for my own work that the time/effort spent learning how to write such a script is worth it, since I’m obviously rather comfortable with Grace. (It’s worth noting for a certain repetitive plots I have used IDL.)
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John Gizis Says
I’d think the only reason to use sm is that you are used to it. It was popular in the 90s.
Jul 18th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Marcos Says
Hmm, that explains the older generation but not so much, say - anyone in graduate school now. But, inertia is a powerful thing. Why I use grace and not the “real” Mac program, Plot. (Plot really needs a more distinctive name.)
Jul 18th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Heng Says
I think it also depends on the requirements. I somestimes need to generate a lot of similar plots. A scripting plotter like gnuplot is best suited for me. And in this case, I do not need something fancy. Also thank you for the article. I used to use “grapher” for interactive plotting. It is not so powerful.
Jul 19th, 2007 at 7:34 am
patricia monger Says
beats me - though i am sure i’d have to think about it were my choices to be either use idl for line graphics or pull my fingernails out with pliers.
grace is nice though
Jul 27th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
John Says
Something else entirely: Python/matplotlib.
Aug 6th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
karl Says
why not just use Ploticus with Ruby
http://www.ntecs.de/blog-old/Blog/RubyPloticus.rdoc
Aug 7th, 2007 at 3:28 am
Sammy Says
I voted for Plot, but I don’t have any personal favourite. In general, I use Gnuplot, Xmgrace and Plot as there are pros and cons in all of those. Gnuplot is convenient when I need to do a lot of similar plots as it’s easy just to copy those script files. Xmgrace comes with nice features like median extraction and Fourier transforms. Plot does the basic stuff very well, but it’s a bit tricky when one needs super/subscripts, Greek letters etc. Plot is not very rapid either in situations where one needs multiple similar plots, but the default settings are not acceptable.
Aug 11th, 2007 at 10:48 am
John Says
I’d much rather have an easily scriptable plotting package — and one that integrates tightly with my existing code — than having to deal with a GUI (especially a clunky, old-fashioned, Motif based one). It’s fortunate that there’s such a diverse software ecosystem to choose from: everyone can find something that suits them.
One thing this discussion hasn’t touched on is output quality. That seems to me to be as important as a convenient user interface. I’d certainly steer clear of any package that didn’t offer something similar to Gnuplot’s “epslatex” output (ie an eps figure with associated LaTeX labels).
Aug 13th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
veil Says
Here’s yet another package for generating plots, etc.:
http://mathcs.holycross.edu/~ahwang/current/ePiX.html
Aug 14th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Eric Says
I use SM because it is scriptable, and that way I have an easily-recoverable record of how I made a particular plot. It makes it far easier to go back and fix the errors I invariably make for publication plots. And making lots of similar plots is simple, as Heng and Sammy say. I also like the output quality and use of latex labels.
Then again, I work in a field where QDP/PLT is still alive and kicking. We all have our weird quirks.
Aug 15th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Margaret Says
I’m a big fan of Mathematica since it’s convenient to turn out a pretty plot from where I’m doing analysis in the first place. Also, it has lots of bells and whistles for making attractive figures, but looking at Grace, which seems to offer similar features, I might be convinced to give it a shot too.
Aug 21st, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Aaron Says
I’m a recent convert to the plotting capabilities in ‘R’. The defaults are always good and in general I prefer the plots I get with a few lines compared to the IDL equivalents. It’s fully scriptable (though in all honesty I use Gnuplot when I need a program to churn them out), and installs easily on all systems. The Mac version is particularly nice, and quartz native. It’s a hassle to Google though…
Sep 24th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Andreas Berlind Says
SM is very powerful and easy to use. The main things I like about it are: - very easy to script with it and embed SM scripts within shell scripts. So I run one script from the command line which typically runs some C code, produces data files, starts up SM, does some processing of the data, makes a plot, saves it to postscript, exits SM, and brings it up on the screen. - the ability to use LaTeX for all labels - it’s very easy to manipulate vectors and of course, - I know it well
Oct 10th, 2007 at 10:04 am
j Says
something else entirely: python/matplotlib. idl is a proprietary programming language–far more insidious that mere commercial software is a commercial, closed source (expensive!) programming language that locks you in once code is written. furthermore, making beautiful plots is difficult (try putting in greek letters–!7d!3, etc etc). matplotlib can have all its text typeset in latex, allowing for beautiful and easy labels. furthermore, if you’re like me, any figure will inevitably be screwed up so many times that editing it using a GUI by hand would take forever.
Oct 12th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
biw Says
pglot with perl
Oct 16th, 2007 at 12:12 am
jon Says
Worth a look as well: SmileLab, http://www.satimage.fr/software/en/smilelab/index.html
Oct 22nd, 2007 at 6:16 am
jlu Says
something else entirely: python/matplotlib I like having a full programming language AND a first rate plotting package all at the same time. EPS/LATEX support is great and I can actually see what is going to be saved to an EPS file without all the hassle that IDL imposes. Lastly, this all works within PyRAF/IRAF as well so I don’t have to have separate C-code, IRAF/shell scripts, and IDL plotting code. I have switched over to python/pyraf/matplotlib entirely.
Oct 24th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
libero Says
I have pretty much just used aquaterm which I’ve been happy with although I’m just a Masters student in astrophysics.
By the way, I don’t want to hijack the thread but how can I use greek letters for the axes on a mac? I normally run a script to scale, plot etc. but ‘enhanced’ doesn’t work.
Nov 20th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Marcos Says
Greek letters for the axes on the Mac … which plotting program are you asking about? SM? Some other commenter will have to help you - I don’t use SM much myself.
Nov 21st, 2007 at 9:37 pm