A Brief History, Progress Update, and Future Directions
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Peter Wang
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Enthought, Inc.
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What is Chaco?
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-Chaco is a plotting application toolkit for Python. You use it to build
-stand-alone plotting applications, or embed it inside any application that needs
-to visualize numerical data.
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Sample plotting applications:
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batch plotting of data
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interactive data inspector
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realtime data acquisition and plotting
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plot/graph constructor
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More plotting applications
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It's not all scientific-y stuff!
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sound waveform editor
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graphic equalizer
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graphical stock ticker
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Google Maps
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Any time you want to view numerical information in a structured way, you
-are doing plotting.
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What makes Chaco special?
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Chaco has an architecture that facilitates viewing interrelated data
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Chaco is designed from the ground up to be interactive (user interaction
-and data inspection)
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That's it??
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That's enough!
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many, many plotting apps out there
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not many that are real "toolkits" (jfreechart, INT widgets)
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fewer are designed for really interactive use
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even fewer are free
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none (that I'm aware of) in Python
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Most of the hard math problems are solved or patented: contouring, label placement, fast 2d graphics routines.
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What remains is the software challenge. A good toolkit provides modular pieces that play well together. They must map onto the problem domain (plotting) in a coherent way.
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A brief history
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Originally developed a few years ago by Dave Morrill and others