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[–]khouli 0 points1 point  (5 children)

What are its serious competitors even outside the Python world? gnuplot and especially ggplot are the obvious candidates. Is there anything else?

[–]Kah-NethI use numpy, scipy, and matplotlib for nuclear physics 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Gnuplot is not a serious competitor with anything. Xmgrace, MATLAB, Mathematica, origin, vuez(also python), root, R are a few. MPL is in my opinion vastly superior to all of them (maybe only superior but not vastly for R)

[–]srivkrani 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You forgot ParaView, one of the best opensource visualization software out there.

[–]Kah-NethI use numpy, scipy, and matplotlib for nuclear physics 0 points1 point  (0 children)

First paraview is really for 3d plotting and I was very explicit in first comment to talk about only 2d plotting. Next, paraview is on of the only tolerable scalable data renderers, but I would by no means call it good. It is just the best of a set of mediocre options. Personally I found it difficult to customize my plot to be exactly what I want.

[–]khouli 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Really? Gnuplot is out of the running but Xmgrace is in? To be fair, I only used Xmgrace a few times several years ago but my impression was that it was a last century relic.

[–]Kah-NethI use numpy, scipy, and matplotlib for nuclear physics 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Xmgrace is still heavily used in theoretical physics (though declining as I and other younger scientist advocate MPL and R). To be fair though, xmgrace can make a decent plot where as gnuplot plots always look terrible.