Greetings, Thank you for the reply.!!
Hi Jay, I suggest you join the matplotlib mailing list
> I started using Cygwin at work, where it is used to port Java
> code between Linux, solaris, and windows. ((
> http://www.onesaf.org/ )) I installed it at home on my laptop
> - which runs windows - wasn't able to find all of the Linux
> device drivers. Cyqwin has GCC compilers - which I used to
> write C program that called a public server that generated
> html and jpgs with charts.
> Alas, the service is no more.
> May I ask your opinion? Is there a simple way to do this?
> 
After 5 hours of surfing and digging, it seems like I
> would need: - data for the charts - an api for a
> chart-generator - an output method - portable output
If I understand you correctly, yes this is simple. First, though, I
am not clear if you want to generate the charts and look at them
immediately, or if you want to run the script in batch mode and
produce figures which are not displayed, but are perhaps embedded in
some html for use with a web server. Both are possible but the way
you go about it is a little different. I'm going to assume the former
for now.
> Graph paper and a compass are starting to look good..
> Seriously, if I install Python, MatLab and GTK on windows,
> what would the chart output be??
I think you are referring to matplotlib, not matlab. matplotlib is an
open source python library for producing graphics with a matlab-like
syntax. matlab is a proprietary application developed by The
Mathworks.
If you install python, Numeric, pygtk, GTK and matplotlib following
the instructions on the matplotlib web site, it should be fairly easy
to do statistical charting with or without cygwin. That seems like a
lot of packages but it is easy since they all have friendly windows
installers.
If you have a fast internet connection and can do a 60MB download, I
recommend the enthought addition of python
http://enthought.com/python/ since it comes Numeric, scipy, wxpython
and a lot of extra goodies you'll find useful down the road. To
install GTK and pygtk, it is important that you follow the
instructions at http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/installing.html;
basically you have to set a PATH.
Your prototype matplotlib script would be
from matplotlib.matlab import *
x, y = ... your data here ...
plot(x,y)
show()
This would open a GTK window which you can use to view, interact with,
and save your output. I recommend saving figures as PNG, which is a
nice, portable image format, if you want to put them on a web page or
send them to a colleague as an attachment, or PS for publication
quality.
Let me know in a little more detail what it is you are trying to
achieve and I (or someone else on the matplotlib-users mailing list)
can probably offer some more help.
JDH