>>>>> "Vadim" == Vadim V Zhytnikov <vvzhy@mail.ru> writes:
Vadim> Peter Ulrich Kruppa ?????:
>> On Sun, 2 Nov 2003, Vadim V. Zhytnikov wrote:
>>
>>> Peter Ulrich Kruppa ?????:
>>>
>>>> Hi!
>>>>
>>>> I have got some problems to print plots produced by Maxima.
>>>> I think the simpliest solution should be to produce a postscript
>>>> file, which - according to the docs - can be done this way:
>>>> (C4) plot2d(x^2,[x,-5,5],[PLOT_FORMAT,PS]);
>>>>
>>>> I receive a FALSE from maxima and find a file called
>>>> maxout.ps in my home directory.
>>>>
>>>> maxout.ps contains a long list of pairs of numbers - nothing else.
>>>> How can I make this a printable .ps file?
>>>> Or do I have to set anything else?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for your answers.
>>>>
>>>> Uli.
>>>>
>>>> P.S. Openmath and Geomview don't seem to work properly on my
>>>> system (FreeBSD -CURRENT) - to hack these wouldn't be the
>>>> simpliest solution. The gnuplot option works, but as far as
>>>> I know, gnuplot only produces boxplots.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, it seems that PS output is broken in plot2d (but works with
>>> plot3d with recent Maxima CVS fixes).
It seems that plot2d_ps is the function you want. But it currently
has bugs where it doesn't understand the output from draw2d anymore.
(Try plotting sin(x)/x for [x, 0, 1].)
>> Yes, you are right. plot3d produces great postscripts.
>> I think this is a bug, that should be fixed with high priority, since
>> .ps (and .eps) produce the best quality printouts with latex or
>> OpenOffice. And, they can easily be scaled and converted to any other
>> format.
>>
Vadim> You are right PS is probably the only vital option
Vadim> if we want to save plot for later use. Please register
Vadim> bug on Maxima web site at SourceForge.
Eww. I think that of all plotting options, maxima's PS output is
probably the ugliest available, and would never consider using them
for anything, even for just looking on the screen. For plot2d_ps, the
axes are unlabeled. The bounding box is the whole page, the tick
marks are way too small, etc. For plot3d, the xyz axis is always the
same size, there are no tick marks, no bounding box, etc.
Openmath isn't bad, but it lacks a lot of stuff too. My personal
favorite is gnuplot, which at least has axis labels and tick marks.
You can save the output for later too. And gnuplot produces pretty
good PS and EPS output for use in other documents.
I have not tried geomview or zic in ages. Zic used to make very nice
3D shaded plots but was confused when you had 8-bit and 24-bit
X visuals. I don't even know if they work anymore.
Ray