Dear ConTeXt folks, I need to plot some random walks similar to [1], but for example I need to emphasize certain sections of the plot and put labels and notes in there. Could you recommend a tool to easily accomplish that goal with easily. I guess it can be done with any of those as seen by the demos [2][3]. I only have little experience using Gnuplot and I have never used Asymptote or MetaFun. These three seem to be well integrated with ConTeXt and I guess in the end I could just create the image files and include these in to my ConTeXt source. The only downside of Asymptote I found so far is, that there is no mailing list. Thanks in advance, Paul [1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Random_Walk_example.svg [2] http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/gallery/2D graphs/index.html [3] http://gnuplot.info/screenshots/index.html#demos
On Mon 18 Apr 2011, Paul Menzel wrote:
I only have little experience using Gnuplot and I have never used Asymptote or MetaFun. These three seem to be well integrated with ConTeXt and I guess in the end I could just create the image files and include these in to my ConTeXt source.
If you don't mind using external figures, I personally would recommend matplotlib (as used to create the example you linked to) -- in which case you already have an example script for your graph :-). The annotation and labelling facilities are extensive (see http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/examples/pylab_examples/annotation_demo2.h... ) and there is ample documentation. I used to be a happy Gnuplot user, but I find that with matplotlib the easy things are just as easy, the hard things are easier, and some of the impossible things become possible. I did give MetaFun a try before turning to matplotlib, but I found it quite difficult to work with. That's strictly related to my personal requirements and taste though -- there are many satisfied MetaFun users on this list (and thus good support) and of course it is very well integrated with ConTeXt. Asymptote looks nice but I've never tried it. I think there have been some issues with ConTeXt integration in the past (see http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.tex.context/54389 ) but am unsure of the current state. Hope this helps, Pont
On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 22:20, Paul Menzel wrote:
Dear ConTeXt folks,
I need to plot some random walks similar to [1], but for example I need to emphasize certain sections of the plot and put labels and notes in there.
Could you recommend a tool to easily accomplish that goal with easily. I guess it can be done with any of those as seen by the demos [2][3].
I only have little experience using Gnuplot and I have never used Asymptote or MetaFun. These three seem to be well integrated with ConTeXt and I guess in the end I could just create the image files and include these in to my ConTeXt source.
The only downside of Asymptote I found so far is, that there is no mailing list.
Below you have an example done in metapost/metafun (which integrates well with ConTeXt). The downside of metapost is that you have to do all the labels and axis drawing more or less manually, while gnuplot will take care of drawing axes and properly adjusting the range etc. On the other hand metapost might be quite powerful for geometrically complex graphics. If you use gnuplot, you might need to precompute the points for the random walk (it supports random numbers, but I'm not sure if you can calculate sums), while metapost can do some reasonable calculations on the fly. For 2D graphics asymptote doesn't bring you much. Yet another alternative is TikZ and pgfplots (similar to metapost, more library functions ready to draw all kinds of graphics, but less powerful math engine that in metapost). \setupcolors [state=start] \starttext \startMPpage save wx, wy; wx = 15cm; wy = 10cm; draw unitsquare shifted (0,-0.5) xyscaled (wx,wy); save val; numeric val; save tmp; numeric tmp; save p; path p; save c; color c[]; c[1] = red; c[2] = .5[red,yellow]; c[3] = .6green; c[4] = blue; c[5] = .4white; vardef newval = val := val + floor(uniformdeviate(2))*2-1; (val) enddef; for n=1 upto 5: val := 0; draw (0,0) for i=0 upto 100: -- (0.01*i*wx,0.025*newval*wy) endfor withcolor c[n]; endfor for i=0 step 20 until 100: label.bot(decimal(i), (0.01*i*wx,-.5*wy)); endfor; for i=-20 step 5 until 20: label.lft(decimal(i), (0,0.025*i*wy)); endfor; \stopMPpage \stoptext
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011, Paul Menzel wrote:
The only downside of Asymptote I found so far is, that there is no mailing list.
Asymptote has fairly active forums on sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/projects/asymptote/forums/forum/409349 and at art of problem solving http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/viewforum.php?f=519 Aditya
participants (4)
-
Aditya Mahajan -
Mojca Miklavec -
Paul Menzel -
Pontus Lurcock