so many plotting packages

Ben Arthur

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Oct 28, 2016, 3:17:56 PM10/28/16

to julia-users

would be nice to have an organization to contain all of these. as @StefanKarpinski pointed out (i forget where exactly), it would help to encourage developers to work together. it would also help new users of julia figure out which package they want to use.

Cameron McBride

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Oct 28, 2016, 3:39:46 PM10/28/16

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There is some work on this. On your list is Plots.jl, which is a unifying package that is backend agnostic. Specifically,
http://github.com/tbreloff/Plots.jl

Also, see:
https://github.com/JuliaPlots

Some seriously great stuff in there (and I say that as a user that has been plotting in Julia for a couple years now).

Cameron

Chris Rackauckas

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Oct 28, 2016, 9:15:29 PM10/28/16

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Just use Plots.jl. JuliaPlots and Plots.jl is essentially a metapackage/org which puts this all together into one convenient package. It works very well and should be recommended as the standard plotting package to almost everyone.

Ben Arthur

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Oct 28, 2016, 9:47:59 PM10/28/16

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i wasn't looking for recommendations. am happily using gadfly. started out with pyplot three years ago.

rather, i just think the julia community would benefit by collecting all these packages in one place. since tbreloff appears to want to keep an iron grip on juliaplots, i'd suggest moving the rest to juliagraphics. make sense?

Isaiah Norton

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Oct 28, 2016, 11:08:43 PM10/28/16

to julia...@googlegroups.com

the julia community would benefit by collecting all these packages in one place.

There are only 3 or 4 of those packages that should be recommended for general use. If someone wants to help users decide what package to use, write up a comparison page with examples. It could be linked from the existing blurbs on the download page.

i'd suggest moving the rest to juliagraphics. make sense?

Trying to herd together a group of people who have already rejected the aesthetic or engineering choices of existing, competing projects seems totally futile. Winston and Gadfly existed before many of the newer packages, but people chose to start/use/contribute to newer things anyway. Putting packages in an org doesn't make people want to start cooperating. Some of those listed are unmaintained or hobby experiments, and as your link demonstrates, sometimes people just want to do their own thing -- and that's fine!

Tobias Knopp

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Oct 29, 2016, 3:04:03 AM10/29/16

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I want to second what Isaiah said. It can make sense to "bless" packages as the default packages where people should look at.

But that people are doing independent approaches is the very nature of open source which will (and should not) change. Often it even happens that stating with a fresh approach by a new individual can lead to new innovation making things better.

Tobi

Michael Borregaard

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Oct 29, 2016, 9:32:31 AM10/29/16

to julia-users

Independent approaches and a large number of largely experimental packages is the nature of open source development, yes, and may provide lots of creative new solutions. But to keep a technical language useful and attractive I think it is a very big advantage if there are defined standards, and that people generally favour collaboration over competition in development. This was discussed in the "Tower of Babel" thread, which may be what Ben Arthur is referring to? I don't see how that would be achieved by putting them in the same organisation, what is required is coordination and agreement to contribute to a shared standard project.

I can understand if the julia maintainers would require a standard plotting package to be 1) written in Julia and 2) maintained by the larger community. Right now Gadfly fits that bill - the trouble is just that a lot of people (including myself) prefer Plots, which is neither 'pure' julia nor really a community effort, but IMHO a lot more user friendly. (Note though that it is not backend agnostic - it offers a handful of backends, but not others (e.g. Gadfly, Winston etc)). Plots also has the advantage that package developers can offer plotting functionality with Plots without having their package depend on it, which is a potential game changer.

I think it can be said that this is still very much in development, and my hope is that over time a standard will emerge that fits users, the core team and package developers alike. I definitely follow this with great interest.

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