Software for Graphics and Data Analysis

As the data we collect from high-bandwidth instruments (e.g. sensors on satellites) and the output we obtain from high resolution numerical simulations threaten to overwhelm us with gigabytes of numbers devoid of meaning, we must develop and use data analysis and graphing tools as complicated as, if not more so, those used to produce the numbers. Fortunately, for the folks who need to use such tools and don't have a year or so to spare designing and building one, there are quite a few of these tools freely available on the Web. Some are the finished products of research groups (or, in some cases, individuals), and some are continually being developed and welcome user input for improvements or additions.

I've collected these tools and list them below in in three broad categories which (inevitably) overlap to some extent. The first group contains links to software that is chiefly designed for graphing 2-D (and less often but moreso all the time 3-D) data. These range from the simplest (in concept and design) packages for quickly drawing 2-D graphs to systems for creating 3-D graphs with animation, ray-tracing, texture-mapping, and various other capabilities. As you might expect, the more complicated the package gets the more onerous are the hardware requirements. Most of the packages also contain simple data handling capabilities such as multiplying the data being plotted by a constant, although that is not their main purpose.

The second group features software that is largely concerned with number crunching tasks, especially the manipulation of large and multi-dimensional matrices. These usually feature some sort of native interpreted language that allows a complicated series of mathematical operations such as matrix inversion, multiplication, and the like to be performed on one's data using a job script. Some also feature graphics capabilities but, at least as far as I can tell, that is not their primary function.

The third group consists of software for storing various types of data in a standard and/or compressed format so we don't spend too much of our lives converting data from one obscure format to another. These are usually libraries of functions that are called from the programs we use to create or read the original data. Initially these can be a bit of a pain to use, but in the long-term the consistency and parsimony of storage as well as the portability of our data sets make these well worth the effort.

I'll stick mainly to describing the packages in their own words, reserving any editorial comments for the software I've actually had the pleasure to use enough to form an opinion. I'll also mention analogous commercial packages where it seems appropriate and supply an additional listing of those I deem needing more than a passing mention. This is going to be overwhelmingly biased towards packages that will run in UNIX workstation environments, with a not-so-subtle additional bias (at least in the way of reviews) towards those that will run on Linux platforms. Although some of the packages will also run on MS-DOS/Windows or Mac platforms, their appearance in this listing will be fortuitous rather than the result of me looking for them.

Another site with a flavor similar to this one is the listing at the Visual Software Support Lab. This contains information on various commercial packages, e.g. Matlab, PV-WAVE, etc., that I may not include here. You also might want to peruse the Annotated Scientific Visualization Weblet of Al Globus. This site has links to scientific visualization Web sites whether or not any software is available at that site. And for the 3D aficionados, there's a site that provides an overview of several dozen 3D Graphic Engines, and a tutorial about such things entitled 3D Graphics for the World Wide Web: The Basics. For those into the graphics file formats thing there's the Graphics File Formats Page.

Please send me email if you have any suggestions for corrections or additions to this list. There's always room for one more here. I'd also appreciate immediate notification of any dead links. Also, do not ask me to assist in installing any of the following software. Any request for this type of help will most likely be ignored. There's just no way I can serve as a consultant, free or otherwise, for over a hundred different software packages. The packages or package sites usually contain information on how to contact the author(s). Contact them. They wrote the software; I just use some of it. Consider this site beerware: if you ever meet me, then you owe me one.

You can search for packages via the categories listed below or, if you're just searching for a specific software package name, try the software package list which contains only the package names as links to fuller descriptive entries elsewhere. This listing contains the names of all software packages mentioned in my Web pages and is thus a superset of the graphics package pages.

• Mostly graphics (105)
• Mostly numerical analysis and number crunching (22)
• Mostly data formats (9)
• Commercial packages (20)

• Mostly symbolic mathematics (10)
• Mostly GUI development systems (31)
• Wavelet software and information
• Spectral analysis

Contents copyrighted 1995 by S. Baum. Any non-profit use of this page is allowed and, indeed, encouraged as long as it is used in unmodified form, including this message and the name of the original author.