What should I use for making graphs on a website?

Post #350,801 by drook 11/16/11 9:50:24 PM Reply	What should I use for making graphs on a website? Here's the graph I'm getting out of Google docs: http://willpowerisfo...m/daily-weigh-in/ I'd like to not be dependent on any Google apps that don't have a business model, considering their propensity for shutting stuff down with little notice. I can create the app for collecting the data into a DB, I just need a piece to create the graph image. Any suggestions? -- Drew
Post #350,803 by Another Scott 11/16/11 10:11:45 PM Reply	I'm a big fan of gnuplot. http://www.gnuplot.info It's got a little bit of a learning curve, like if you want to use the PostScript terminal, but is easy to just jump right in and use. Of course, since it lets you control and modify every aspect of the plot if you want, it's a big package to master. An example of working with date data is given in the Demos and another is in the good tutorial web pages at LANL - http://t16web.lanl.g...t/datetime-e.html If you know any python, you might want to look at Matplotlib - http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/ It's also very flexible and very powerful. It has a big dates module - http://matplotlib.so...-matplotlib.dates I haven't used MPL much myself. HTH a little. Cheers, Scott.
Post #351,076 by rcsteiner 11/23/11 3:30:06 AM Reply	Re: I'm a big fan of gnuplot. I've used gnuplot under Solaris for several years. Nice package. Still haven't found a good way to generate pretty postscript output and then convert the result to png in a shell script, tho, so I just use the crude png output. My attempts at using Image Magick to do the conversions have been less than satisfactory. -- The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Post #351,087 by Another Scott 11/23/11 8:43:56 AM Reply	Dunno about the Solaris version... The Winders version is up to 4.4 now and the terminals are undergoing rapid updates. My (rather clunky) workflow is still: a) Generate the data; construct the gnuplot script from a previous template. b) Run gnuplot and generate an EPS file. c) Feed the EPS into ghostscript/GSView to display it. d) Maximize the graph on the screen. e) Do a window-interior capture with PMView. f) For a publication graph, change the DPI to 600 then change the X-dimension to 3.35" wide. g) Save the file as a TIF. I started using the PostScript terminal because that was the simplest way to get presentation-quality graphics and "enhanced text". It looks like the PNG terminal can do that on its own now - http://gnuplot.sourc...nhanced_utf8.html - but you'd probably want to use a different font with it (as in the SVG demo of the same script - http://gnuplot.sourc...nhanced_utf8.html ). There have been many enhancements to gnuplot since I started doing things that way (e.g. it has a canvas property now and can generate many enhanced bitmaps/SVGs directly), and the default GUI has been enhanced with wxWidgets, but some of us oldsters can be set in our ways. ;-) Ooh. Version 4.5 (in development) will have an HTML5 Canvas element - http://www.gnuplot.info/demo_canvas/ I dunno how much of this has been ported to Solaris, though the OS/2 version seems to still be worked on. HTH! Cheers, Scott.
Post #350,805 by malraux 11/16/11 10:31:33 PM Reply	HighCharts is good http://www.highcharts.com/ Javascript, no plugins. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #350,806 by Another Scott 11/16/11 10:35:39 PM Reply	That's pretty snazzy! Thanks for the pointer.
Post #350,808 by drook 11/17/11 12:09:32 AM Reply	Ooh, shiny The only downside is I'll have to calculate the ranges for each chart dynamically, and make some assumptions about how much above and below the high and low data I'll need to go. Well, okay, two other downsides. One is the price, but at this point my time is worth more than that. But the other one that I do kind of care about is I'd like the option for an actual image. -- Drew
Post #350,815 by malraux 11/17/11 8:57:25 AM Reply	File side... I believe you can run it in Rhino or V8 if you want to produce a file on the server. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #350,816 by drook 11/17/11 9:45:41 AM Reply	Downloaded it, will try to play with it today -- Drew
Post #351,095 by drook 11/23/11 9:47:18 AM Reply	Found a PEAR package: Image_Graph Pretty full-featured, and a reasonable API. The only shortcoming I can see right now is that it doesn't anti-alias line charts. Although at the daily resolution I use it's not such a big deal. Google Docs version: http://willpowerisfo...m/daily-weigh-in/ Image_Graph version: http://willpowerisfo...acking/?user_id=1 By the way, for anyone into WordPress: All that is set up as a plugin. Adds user preferences to capture goals; creates the page to display all users -- if they set themselves as "public"; and individual users' chart, goals, and current-day data entry. I don't plan on actually selling the plugin at this point, but structuring it that way future-proofs it against WordPress upgrades. -- Drew

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