GNU plotutils is a set of

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

command-line tools and software libraries for generating 2D plot graphics based on data sets. It is used in projects such as PSPP and UMLgraph, and in many areas of academic research, and is included in many

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

distributions such as

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

versions are also available. The library provides bindings for the C and C++ languages. Its stand-alone command-line tools can generate graphs and perform numerical calculation of spline curves and systems of ordinary differential equations. Plotutils is a GNU package and is distributed under a free software licence, the GPL.

History

Several utilities were inspired by

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

plotting utilities. A ''

graph Graph may refer to: Mathematics *Graph (discrete mathematics), a structure made of vertices and edges **Graph theory, the study of such graphs and their properties *Graph (topology), a topological space resembling a graph in the sense of discret ...

'' utility and various plot filters were present in the first releases of Unix from Bell Laboratories. By the time of Version 7 Unix, ''graph'', ''plot'', ''spline'', and several device-dependent versions of ''libplot'' were standard Unix features. The first display device supported by the package was a Tektronix 611 storage scope. By the early 1980s, numerous other devices were supported. In 1989, the first GNU versions of ''graph'', ''plot'', ''tek2plot'', ''spline'' and their respective documentation were written.

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman ( ; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

further directed development of the programs and documentation. The distribution, as it stood in 1991, was distributed under the name ''GNU graphics''. In 1995, the package was significantly expanded by writing a device-independent, standalone version of ''libplot'', and by rewriting ''graph'' from scratch, turning it into a real-time filter.

Features

Stand alone tools

* GNU graph, which plots 2-D datasets or data streams in real time. * GNU plot, which translates GNU Metafile format to any of the other formats. * GNU tek2plot, for translating Tektronix 4010 data to any of the above formats. * GNU pic2plot, for translating the pic language to any of the above formats. * GNU plotfont, for displaying character maps of the fonts that are available in the above formats. * GNU spline, which does spline interpolation of data. * GNU ode, which numerically integrates a system consisting of one or more ordinary differential equations.

Supported output formats

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

display * SVG * PNG * PNM * pseudo-

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

(using

run-length encoding Run-length encoding (RLE) is a form of lossless data compression in which ''runs'' of data (consecutive occurrences of the same data value) are stored as a single occurrence of that data value and a count of its consecutive occurrences, rather th ...

rather than LZW to avoid the past patent issue) * WebCGM *

Adobe Illustrator Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor and Computer-aided design, design software developed and marketed by Adobe Inc., Adobe. Originally designed for the Apple Inc., Apple Mac (computer), Macintosh, development of Adobe Illustrator began ...

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...

* PCL *

HP-GL HP-GL, short for Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language and often written as HPGL, is a printer control language created by Hewlett-Packard (HP). HP-GL was the primary printer control language used by HP plotters. It was introduced with the plotteHP-98 ...

* xfig

References

External links