I really love the idea of ggplot and the aesthetic of the charts, but the dependencies make it somewhat impractical to use for light-weight applications. It needs a Fortran compiler, Numpy/Scipy, Matplotlib, and whatever else in between, installing it can be quite a lengthy pain.
Is anyone aware of any maintained Python charting libraries that are less dependency-heavy? Searching yields many results with untouched code from 2009 and older.
It appears much of the advancement in charting libraries is going towards JavaScript/SVG client-side rendered toolkits.
I am particularly partial to jgraph, which is a small C program with basically no dependencies.
I have this in my ~/bin to convert jgr files to trimmed PDFs (requires pdfcrop from texlive and ps2pdf from ghostscript, I think):
jgraph -P "$1" | ps2pdf - - | pdfcrop - "$2"
I’m not aware of any language bindings for jgraph, but if you spend an hour with its man page, you should be able to write simple jgr files in a jiffy. (Maybe skim the lecture notes on the author’s web page first.)
Fun fact: jgraph was written in 1992 but didn’t stop compiling until ca. October 2012. At that point, the author fixed it and released a new version.
As an Archlinux user, I’m obligated to inform you that I maintain a package for it in the AUR.
I did not notice it uses the same base libs as ggplot.py. I been taking the easy route by installing via anacoda, which makes most of these dependency installs simple on OS X.
I really love the idea of ggplot and the aesthetic of the charts, but the dependencies make it somewhat impractical to use for light-weight applications. It needs a Fortran compiler, Numpy/Scipy, Matplotlib, and whatever else in between, installing it can be quite a lengthy pain.
Is anyone aware of any maintained Python charting libraries that are less dependency-heavy? Searching yields many results with untouched code from 2009 and older.
It appears much of the advancement in charting libraries is going towards JavaScript/SVG client-side rendered toolkits.
I am particularly partial to jgraph, which is a small C program with basically no dependencies.
I have this in my
~/binto convertjgrfiles to trimmed PDFs (requirespdfcropfromtexliveandps2pdffromghostscript, I think):I’m not aware of any language bindings for
jgraph, but if you spend an hour with its man page, you should be able to write simplejgrfiles in a jiffy. (Maybe skim the lecture notes on the author’s web page first.)Fun fact: jgraph was written in 1992 but didn’t stop compiling until ca. October 2012. At that point, the author fixed it and released a new version.
As an Archlinux user, I’m obligated to inform you that I maintain a package for it in the AUR.
Seaborn perhaps? http://stanford.edu/~mwaskom/software/seaborn/index.html
Ah, seaborn looks very nice too, but alas has the exact same dependencies as ggplot. :)
I did not notice it uses the same base libs as ggplot.py. I been taking the easy route by installing via anacoda, which makes most of these dependency installs simple on OS X.