gnuplot vs Matplotlib

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I've started on a project graphing Tomcat logs using gnuplot-py, specifically correlating particular requests with memory allocation and garbage collection. What is the collective wisdom on gnuplot-py vs Matplotlib for Python graphing. Are there better graphing libraries out there I haven't heard of?

My general considerations are:

  • While gnuplot has large amounts of documentation, gnuplot-py doesn't. How good is documentation community for Matplotlib?
  • Are there things which gnuplot can do, but gnuplot-py can't?
  • Does Matplotlib have better Python support?
  • Are there are big show stopping bugs in either? Annoyances?
  • Currently gnuplot is graphing 100,000's of points, I'm planning on scaling this up to millions. Should I expect problems? How well does Matplotlib handle this?
  • Ease of use, turnaround time for gnuplot vs Matplotlib?
  • How easy would it be to port existing gnuplot-py code to Matplotlib?

How would you approach this task?

graphing gnuplot matplotlib logging python
8 Answers
  • You can check matplotlib's documentation yourself. I find it quite comprehensive.
  • I have very little experience with gnuplot-py, so I can not say whether it can do all gnuplot can.
  • Matplotlib is written in and designed specifically for Python, so it fits very nicely with Python idioms and such.
  • Matplotlib is a mature project. NASA uses it for some stuff.
  • I've plotted tens of millions of points in Matplotlib, and it still looked beautiful and responded quickly.
  • Beyond the object-oriented way of using Matplotlib is the pylab interface, which makes plotting as easy as it is in MATLAB -- that is, very easy.
  • As for porting from gnuplot-py to matplotlib, I have no idea.
Autoplectic_499940

matplotlib has pretty good documentation, and seems to be quite stable. The plots it produces are beautiful - "publication quality" for sure. Due to the good documentation and the amount of example code available online, it's easy to learn and use, and I don't think you'll have much trouble translating gnuplot code to it. After all, matplotlib is being used by scientists to plot data and prepare reports - so it includes everything one needs.

One marked advantage of matplotlib is that you can integrate it with Python GUIs (wxPython and PyQt, at least) and create GUI application with nice plots.

eliben_82060

After using GNUplot (with my own Python wrapper) for a long time (and really not liking the 80s-looking output), I just started having a look at matplotlib. I must say I like it very much, the output looks really nice and the docs are high quality and extensive (although that also goes for GNUplot). The one thing I spent ages looking for in the matplotlib docs is how to write to an image file rather than to the screen! Luckily this page explains it pretty well: http://www.dalkescientific.com/writings/diary/archive/2005/04/23/matplotlib_without_gui.html

user_1995540

I have played with both, and I like Matplotlib much better in terms of Python integration, options, and quality of graphs/plots.

cgoldberg_161480

Some pro's of gnuplot (I still don't like matlibplot after years of usage):

  • plot function simply with sin(x) (no need to define arrays and think about ranges)
  • plot files directly (no need to import into an array)
  • plot piped-data (execute shell commands on the fly "<echo 1 2 3")
  • copy-to-clipboard button
  • faster plotting
  • faster coding
  • keywords easier to remember

gplot.py is another wrapper gnuplot wrapper for python and jupyter.

user_117697650
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