Re: [Orgmode] graphing from org-tables

[Eric Schulte]

It seems that the ability to generate graphs/plots from org files may
be general enough to be useful as either an addition to org-table or
as a new org-plot library.  Carsten has suggested the addition of a
new gnuplot (or maybe R-plot or just plot) link type to be used for
plotting

I would be happy to help write up such a library, but would like to
first push some discussion of what some of the potential uses would
be.  Here are some seed questions/thoughts...

1) Would it ever make sense to graph/plot information which is not in
   an org-table, if so how would that information be stored?
  - function or equation in the gnuplot link
  - array of values in the link
  - latex function (cringe)
  - elsewhere
2) It seems that it may be useful to automatically generate/update
   plots during publication of org-files to latex or html
3) Currently I find it very useful to be able to see an initial plot
   of a table with a single command, however there should be a sliding
   scale from ease of plotting to greater control over the final plot.
   Maybe through specification of gnuplot options through properties,
   or simply specification of a gnuplot script.
4) also clearly R is another plotting library of interest, how should
   different libraries be handled.
5) would application of more powerful libraries like R to org-tables
   be useful as an alternative to calc, or is this beginning to look
   like a kitchen sink

I'm sure there are many other interesting places where this discussion
could lead.  Please see emails below for the genesis of these ideas,
and share your own thoughts.

Thanks -- Eric

On Saturday, July 26, at 13:21, Carsten Dominik wrote:
 > 
 > On Jul 26, 2008, at 12:36 PM, Eric Schulte wrote:
 > 
 > > I am happy to collaborate,
 > >
 > > Ideas for expansion mentioned so far include;
 > >
 > >>> I can think of a couple of extensions which should be worthwhile
 > >>> 1) titling the graph lines, by their column headers (when present)
 > >>> 2) exposing some of the gnuplot options (with lines, with bars,  
 > >>> title,
 > >>>  lt, etc...), the only problem there is how to expose them without
 > >>>  cluttering the interface
 > >>> 3) probably there are some more which would be useful...
 > >>
 > >>
 > >> The best way to make this extensible is to use a property list as a
 > >> parameter to the function that creates the plot.
 > >>
 > >>
 > >> like this:
 > >>
 > >> (defun org-table-gnuplot (params)
 > >>
 > >> and params can be a property list of arbitrary size with properties  
 > >> like
 > >>
 > >> :title "string"
 > >> :xcol N
 > >> :ycols (n1 n2 n3)
 > >> :labelrow N
 > >>
 > >> etc etc.  This you could use to expose any amount of gnuplot options
 > >> you would want.
 > >>
 > >> Other ideas:
 > >>
 > >> - I think it might be better if the link can be just before or  
 > >> after a
 > >> table, so we could make the function search forward to the next table
 > >> and use that.
 > >>
 > >> - instead of using elisp links, we could define a new link type
 > >> gnuplot: to do this.  Not required, but might make things more  
 > >> compact
 > >> and clean.
 > >
 > > Also it looks like this thread is still alive in the mailing list, so
 > > maybe discussion of features/extensions should be moved there?
 > >
 > > What do you think?
 > 
 > Absolutely!
 > 
 > With the new post from Dan, maybe we can create an org-plot.el  
 > extension that will do all kinds of crazy things.
 > 
 > Please go ahead and move our discussion back into the mailing list -  
 > I'll let you do it because I will be out of the game for a month soon.
 > 
 > - Carsten
 > 
 > >
 > >
 > > Thanks -- Eric
 >