Ploticus is a free

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

, open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 (GPL

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

) program for producing plots and charts from data. It runs under Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

, Solaris

Solaris

- Fiction :* Solaris , a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem** Solaris , directed by B. Nirenburg** Solaris , directed by Andrei Tarkovsky** Solaris , directed by Steven Soderbergh...

, Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

, Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, and Win32 systems. Community support is customarily done through Yahoo News Groups. Bruce Byfield in Linux.COM described Ploticus as, "...a throwback to the days when Unix programs did one thing, and did it well, using a minimum of system resources."

History

The first version was released August 25, 1999. Ploticus is a mature product with activity, where the last major release (2.41) occurred in March 2009 and a single patch as recent as March 18, 2011.

Graph Types and Features

At the center of Ploticus lies a scripting language. Through the scripting language, "2-D graphs and... basic statistical functions" are supported. The author provides the community the ability to produce sophisticated graphs quickly using scripts previously developed, called "prefabs". New users only need to supply a minimum amount of input parameters with their data. Users can modify or create their own "prefabs" to customize their needs.

Ploticus supports the following graphing capabilities: line plots, filled line plots, category line plots, ranges sweeps, pie graphs, vertical bar graphs, horizontal bar charts, timelines, floating bar segments, bar proportions, scatter plots, heat maps (density grids), single variable distribution, error bars, curve fitting, vector plots, Venn diagrams, Venn magnitude charts, tree diagrams. Features include: scaling & axises, legends, annotations, clickmap, and mouse-over support.

Real World Uses

Ploticus can be used to provide real-world graphing usage such as:

• Animal Phenome Graphing
• Climate Trending
• Health Data Analysis

Products Leveraging Ploticus

Ploticus is used with various other products such as:

• Semantic Media Wiki
• EasyTimeline
• NSF IPM (Integrated Performance Monitoring)
• Asterisk GUI Client

Competing Graphing Products

Other common open source products considered to be peers with ploticus include: gnuplot, gnumeric, qtiplot.

External links

• Ploticus Homepage
• Ploticus used as a wiki-plugin inside the TWiki
  TWiki
  TWiki is a Perl-based structured wiki application, typically used to run a collaboration platform, knowledge or document management system, a knowledge base, or team portal...
  
  wiki-engine