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From: wagner@chepil.weru.ksu.edu (Larry Wagner)
Subject: Re: Scientific Plotting Package under MSDOS?
Message-ID: <1991Mar27.174444.2945@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu>
Sender: news@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu (The News Guru)
Organization: Kansas State University
References: <91085.095650J0S@psuvm.psu.edu> <21458@shlump.nac.dec.com> <1991Mar26.190409.27379@ariel.unm.edu>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 91 17:44:44 GMT
Lines: 56

cn9gr8ad@hydra.unm.edu writes:

>In article <21458@shlump.nac.dec.com> gettys@yacht.enet.dec.com (Bob Gettys) writes:
>>
>>	Wingz is also available on the PC to run under MS-Windows V3. I don't
>>know if it has all the capability of its MAC counterpart, though.
>>
>>	/s/	Bob Gettys

>    A program called AXUM is also available that has some nice features
>	for 2-D, 3-D, and projection graphs.  One of the major 
>	drawbacks of most plotting packages that i have looked at 
>	for the PC is the fact that they are written mainly for 
>	" business " applications ( i.e. pie charts, bar graphs ),
>	and dont usually offer many " scientific " options
>	( i.e. 3-D log,log,log ).   If anyone out there has a 
>	favorite, fire a line to me..  Im still in the pursuit of
>	the ultimate PC based 3-D plotter for " scientific data ".


You may want to try SigmaPlot 4.0 by Jandel Scientific.
It is definitely a scientific graphing package as opposed to all the
"business" graphics packages like Harvard Graphics.  It will handle
many types of plots like log-log, log-normal, log-probability (only one I know
that can do this one - which I needed) , etc.  It has very good capabilities
to deal with data transformation (I was able to construct the complimentary
error function (erfx) filter with it's macro capabilities.  It is menu driven
(a little bit mazy but once you have created your template, plotting different
sets of data is pretty straight-forward).  It only handles 2D plots.  We run
it on a 20MHz 386 machine with a coprocessor.  I suspect it would be a little
slow on 8088 machines.  It will use 800x600 extended VGA screen modes which is
very nice for viewing the plot(s) on the screen. Data is displayed and manipulated
in a spreadsheet-like manner.

These are some of the things I can think of off the top of my head that I have
liked about the program and my personal impressions.  It has fulfilled our current
plotting needs under DOS.  Their may be other packages that can do the things
SigmaPlot can do that I don't know about.  I do seem to remember reading a review
about scientific graphing packages recently in PC Magazine (I think it was this
magazine).  It rated another package tops that I know nothing about.  They hit
SigmaPlot for not having 3D capabilities, but I don't need that right now.

Here is their address:

Jandel Scientific
65 Koch Road
Corte Madera, CA  94925
(415)924-8640
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Larry E. Wagner                     | wagner@chepil.weru.ksu.edu
USDA-ARS Wind Erosion Research Unit | wagner@matt.ksu.ksu.edu
105B East Waters Hall, KSU          | ...!{rutgers,texbell}!ksuvax1!weru!wagner
Manhattan, KS 66506                 |phone (913)532-6807
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