A plot of Wikipedia statistics in Ploticus |
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Original author(s) | Steve Grubb |
Initial release | August 25th, 1999 |
Stable release | 2.41 / March 11, 2009 |
Written in | C |
Operating system | Cross-platform |
Type | Data analysis, statistical package, Plotting |
License | GPL |
Website | http://ploticus.sourceforge.net |
Ploticus is a free, open source (GPL) program for producing plots and charts from data. It runs under Unix, Solaris, Mac OS X, Linux, and Win32 systems.[1] Community support is customarily done through Yahoo News Groups.[2] Bruce Byfield in Linux.COM described Ploticus as, "...a throwback to the days when Unix programs did one thing, and did it well, using a minimum of system resources."[3]
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The first version was released August 25, 1999.[4] Ploticus is a mature product with activity, where the last major release (2.41) occurred in March 2009 and a single patch as recent as March 18, 2011.[3]
At the center of Ploticus lies a scripting language.[5] Through the scripting language, "2-D graphs and... basic statistical functions" are supported.[3] The author provides the community the ability to produce sophisticated graphs quickly using scripts previously developed, called "prefabs". New users only need to supply a minimum amount of input parameters with their data.[6] Users can modify or create their own "prefabs" to customize their needs.
Ploticus supports the following graphing capabilities: line plots, filled line plots, category line plots, ranges sweeps, pie graphs, vertical bar graphs, horizontal bar charts, timelines, floating bar segments, bar proportions, scatter plots, heat maps (density grids), single variable distribution, error bars, curve fitting, vector plots, Venn diagrams, Venn magnitude charts, tree diagrams. Features include: scaling & axises, legends, annotations, clickmap, and mouse-over support.[6]
Ploticus can be used to provide real-world graphing usage such as:
Ploticus is used with various other products such as:
Other common open source products considered to be peers with ploticus include: gnuplot, gnumeric, qtiplot.[14]