Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
update doc
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
  • Loading branch information
newville committed Sep 25, 2022
1 parent a8bbcd4 commit ccf4763
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Showing 2 changed files with 15 additions and 27 deletions.
42 changes: 15 additions & 27 deletions doc/comparisons.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -266,6 +266,8 @@ Constructing the example plot above with `pyqtgraph` would look like::

pwin = pg.plot(x, y, pen='#1f77b4', symbol='+')
pwin.plot(x, m, pen='#d62728')
pwin.setWindowTitle('Plot with PyQtGraph')
pwin.setLabel(axis='bottom', text='t (sec)')
pg.exec()


Expand All @@ -276,8 +278,8 @@ with the Qt world, I would happily say that someone more proficient with
PyQt might be able to make excellent use of this. I definitely see
applications using this library to produce good visualizations of data.

That aside, for brevity and clarity, this is very good (but notice that no
labels are shown). The resulting plot looks like
That aside, for brevity and clarity, this is very good. The resulting plot
looks like

.. _plot_compare_qt:

Expand All @@ -292,24 +294,11 @@ the data. And, in fairness to the `pyqtgraph`, it is explicitly designed
to do more than simple line plots.

I find the quality of the Line plots to be somewhat worse than the plots
made with matplotlib (including wxmplot). Being not very familiar with
`pyqtgraph`, I am not certain how to adjust things like margins and the
sizes of markers and text, so I am willing to call some of these things a
matter of taste and say they probably can be improved....

Well, except for one important point. It seems that `pyqtgraph` does not
really expect axes to be labeled. There seems to be no simple methods for
adding such labels, and very few of their examples show labeled axes or
even legends identifying traces. This is sort of surprising and should be
a show-stopper for any scientist displaying data. Plots without labeled
axes should not be tolerated, even from 1st year college students, even for
plots where the context of the plot would make those axes obvious to many
people interpreting the plot. Scientific plots always require labeled axes.
Pyqtgraph has a large number of examples with no labels, and makes setting
labels very difficult. Unless this is fixed, we must conclude that
`pyqtgraph` is suitable for displaying graphical images, but it is not a
tool that should be tolerated for displaying scientific data.

made with matplotlib (including wxmplot). The text is hard to read. Being
not very familiar with `pyqtgraph`, I am not certain how to adjust things
like margins and the sizes of markers and text, so I am willing to call
some of these things a matter of taste and say they might be possible to
improve.


Comparison with PyQtGraph/PythonGUIs
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -603,10 +592,9 @@ available for Python, many shown here are pretty poor, lacking in code
brevity, plot quality, or interactivity. If you are are using web
applications or *want to* embed plots in a web browser, `plotly` looks like
a pretty good choice. If you are using `PyQt`, `pyqtgraph` is an
interesting alternative, but it fails spectacularly at a basic requirement
for scientific plots that all axes must be labeled and traces identified.
For maximum portability, plain `matplotlib.pyplot` is an acceptable choice,
though it offers relatively little in the way of interactivity. If you are
using looking for interactive exploration of your data, we hope you find
that `wxmplot` offers important capabilities that enable script writers and
end-users of applications to have rich interactions with their data.
interesting alternative. For maximum portability, plain `matplotlib.pyplot`
is an acceptable choice, though it offers relatively little in the way of
interactivity. If you are using looking for interactive exploration of
your data, we hope you find that `wxmplot` offers important capabilities
that enable script writers and end-users of applications to have rich
interactions with their data.
Binary file modified doc/images/plot_compare_qt.png
Loading
Sorry, something went wrong. Reload?
Sorry, we cannot display this file.
Sorry, this file is invalid so it cannot be displayed.

0 comments on commit ccf4763

Please sign in to comment.