Re: [Boston.pm] Pretty Graphs with Perl
On Tue, 6 Dec 2005, Alex Brelsfoard wrote: I've got a project coming up that's going to need me to make graphs. I do not yet know what kind of graph (dot, line, bar, etc.). But I am told that it needs to be pretty (and probably with multiple colors). The data needing to be displayed will be anywhere from 5 points, to many thousands of points. There will be some times where I will need to have multiple datasets (separated by color) set on the same graph, one over the next. I was thinking of a brute-force way of doing this with associative arrays. But I was wondering if you all had any better suggestions. Are there any good, friendly, tested modules for this sort of thing? Is this a time for Perl tk? Would this be better off in Java? Have you looked at SVG::Graph or SVG::TT::Graph ? http://search.cpan.org/~allenday/SVG-Graph/Graph.pm http://search.cpan.org/~llap/SVG-TT-Graph/lib/SVG/TT/Graph.pm http://sourceforge.net/projects/svg-graph http://leo.cuckoo.org/projects/SVG-TT-Graph/ http://use.perl.org/~davorg/journal/20979 Quoting from that last URL: At first I looked at GD::Graph as that's pretty much seen as the standard Perl graphing module. But, to be honest, the output really isn't up to the quality that you can get from Excel. Then someone suggested that I look at SVG::TT:Graph instead. And it's great. I got some very useable graphs up in about 15 minutes (then, of course, I spent two hours tweaking them). Of course, the catch is that you have to find a way to display SVG graphics for the project. If the goal is for this to be served over the web, most browsers still don't have SVG support by default, though there are good plugins that can be downloaded installed. These pages give a pretty good overview of SVG issues, including browser support: http://www.carto.net/papers/svg/samples/ http://sdx.archivesdefrance.culture.gouv.fr/gpl/navimages/en/svgViewer.html -- Chris Devers d»Ó¼urÆðekù ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Pretty Graphs with Perl
hi ( 05.12.06 09:26 -0500 ) Alex Brelsfoard: But I was wondering if you all had any better suggestions. Are there any good, friendly, tested modules for this sort of thing? despite the somewhat dismissive comment put forth in the SVG discussion, GD::Graph is quite workable, and can return .jpg .png and others that browsers have no trouble handling. colors c. almost as you might dream them ... Would this be better off in Java? i don't think so, buy ymmv. -- \js oblique strategy: emphasize the flaws ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Pretty Graphs with Perl
I've found this module is extremely useful, and they make very powerful graphs. http://www.advsofteng.com/ Easy to install and use. I can provide assistance if needed. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alex Brelsfoard Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 10:45 AM To: Ronald J Kimball Cc: boston-pm@mail.pm.org Subject: Re: [Boston.pm] Pretty Graphs with Perl Th only problem is that I am going to need to create different dataset and graph them on the fly. Writing files out and then shelling doesn't quite sound like the most efficient way of doing things. Or am I missing things? Basically I will have a HUGE collection of data to pull from, then viewers will select what of that data they want plotted. Then my app should plot it. Make sense? It's seeming kind of like I will need to try a few of these to see what will work. Do you all agree that starting with GD::Graph is probably the best way to start? Thanks everyone. I reallly appreciate this help. I have a feeling this is going to be one of the largest/trickiest apps I've had to create. --Alex On 12/6/05, Ronald J Kimball [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 09:35:18AM -0500, Geoff Rowell wrote: Alex Brelsfoard wrote: I've got a project coming up that's going to need me to make graphs. I do not yet know what kind of graph (dot, line, bar, etc.). But I am told that it needs to be pretty (and probably with multiple colors). The data needing to be displayed will be anywhere from 5 points, to many thousands of points. There will be some times where I will need to have multiple datasets (separated by color) set on the same graph, one over the next. I was thinking of a brute-force way of doing this with associative arrays. But I was wondering if you all had any better suggestions. Are there any good, friendly, tested modules for this sort of thing? Is this a time for Perl tk? Would this be better off in Java? I usually create data files and shell out to GnuPlot. That's also what I do for one of my projects. I tried GD::Graph and Chart::Graph::Gnuplot and wasn't happy with either. GD::Graph only allows you to graph two datasets when using two y axes. Chart::Graph::Gnuplot, which is a wrapper around gnuplot, has an unwieldy interface and makes it difficult to use some features of gnuplot. Ronald ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Pretty Graphs with Perl
Alex wrote: Th only problem is that I am going to need to create different dataset and graph them on the fly. Writing files out and then shelling doesn't quite sound like the most efficient way of doing things. Or am I missing things? Basically I will have a HUGE collection of data to pull from, then viewers will select what of that data they want plotted. Then my app should plot it. Make sense? It's seeming kind of like I will need to try a few of these to see what will work. Do you all agree that starting with GD::Graph is probably the best way to start? I used GD::Graph for a project I did about a week ago. I've used it before, but this was the first time someone cared about how 'pretty' the output was, as opposed to simply how functional it was. My data consisted of an arbitrary number of items graphed along time (x) as a bar or a line. I found that if you are willing to spend a lot of time mucking around with the colours, and you can take steps to crop your data if it will make the graph too crowded, the results are not too bad. They are not beautifully polished, but they are presentable. Two problems in particular that I noted were that the legend sometimes obscures data on the right, and sometimes the calculations for the steps/height of the y-axis are just wacky (for example: steps of .25 when dealing with only whole numbers, or a top height of 2x the highest y-value). I recommend making your own calculations concerning Y and forcing GD::Graph to play along. Also if you have many different items, you may want to cluster them around your points at the X-axis for clarity by introducing an ignored element. This makes it much easier to see what is going on if you have (for instance) 5 elements being displayed at each point of x. - Ann ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
[Boston.pm] tpf blog
the perl foundation has a new blog. its goal is to be a primary source of news about what the perl foundation is doing. http://news.perlfoundation.org/ uri -- Uri Guttman -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.stemsystems.com --Perl Consulting, Stem Development, Systems Architecture, Design and Coding- Search or Offer Perl Jobs http://jobs.perl.org ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
[Boston.pm] Tech Meeting Tues, Dec 13, at MIT
Boston.pm will have a tech meeting on Tuesday, November 8, at MIT, in building E51, room 376 (directions below), starting at 7:15pm*. Ian Langworth will be presenting Class::Agreement - a behavioral contract system for Perl, a project he is working on. I'll also look for some fun bit of obfuscation or creativity to show. RSVP to me if you're planning to attend - rjk-bostonpm(at)tamias.net. Pizza and soda will be provided. Ronald * Starting at 7pm doesn't give me enough time to set up the computer and connect to MIT's network. It's okay if you arrive before 7:15, of course. For more information about Boston Perl Mongers, or to subscribe to one of our mailing lists, visit our website at http://boston.pm.org/ Directions to MIT, Building E51: Building E51 (the Tang Center) is located at the corners of Amherst and Wadsworth Streets in Cambridge. http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?mapterms=e51 Directions by T: Take the Red Line to Kendall. Building E51 is right around the corner from the T stop. From the Inbound side, facing into Main Street, turn right (toward Boston) and walk down the block. Turn right on Wadsworth Street and walk to the corner of Amherst Street. Building E51 is the building across the street directly in front of you with the metal canopy. Directions by Car: General directions provided by MIT: http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?section=directions The Boston Linux and Unix user group also meets at E51, so you may find their directions helpful as well (keeping in mind that we will be meeting in room 376, not room 315): http://www.blu.org/directions/mit/e51-315.php Parking Information: MIT's Amherst Street Lot is adjacent to the building: http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?selection=P4Parking=go Officially, a sticker is required to park in the lot. However, we've been told unofficially that there is no enforcement after 3pm weekdays, nor on the weekends. Chances are very slim that cars will be ticketed. Nonetheless, parking in the lot is at your own risk. ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Tech Meeting Tues, Dec 13, at MIT
On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 02:48:10PM -0500, Ronald J Kimball wrote: Boston.pm will have a tech meeting on Tuesday, November 8, at MIT, in building E51, room 376 (directions below), starting at 7:15pm*. Right after I sent this I realized I'd forgotten to change the date there. That should of course say Tuesday, December 13. Ronald ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Pretty Graphs with Perl
In the past I've tried unsuccessfully to create a multi-part web document using GD. After getting frustrated, I ended up pointing the IMG tag directly to the GD script (i.e. IMG src=myscript.pl), passing all the parameters needed right in the HTML document. The script outputted an image stream to STDOUT, which the IMG tag correctly displayed. That said, I was behind a firewall, and the page was for internal consumption. I don't know if there are any security concerns creating the graphics in this manner for an external site. Also, I am sure this is not the most efficient way of doing it. I'll see if I can dig up the old code snippet that I had and pass it along (it's been over 5 years since I did this). I would be interested in seeing how to create a multi-part html steam, one that includes both graphics and text. Hope this helped. Tal -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alex Brelsfoard Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 4:02 PM To: Ricker, William Cc: boston-pm@mail.pm.org; Richard J. Barbalace Subject: Re: [Boston.pm] Pretty Graphs with Perl Does anyone who has/does use GD::Graph know if there's an easy way to embed the output graphs into HTML. Basically I'd like to be able to print a bunch of HTML, then the graph, then some more HTML. I've got the grph coming out all fine and dandy. Thanks. --Alex On 12/6/05, Ricker, William [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Richard, At the risk of being branded a heretic, Heretic! :-) (-: Pi, fetch the brazier, would you? :-) I would suggest writing such a complex application in Java. Anything written in Java _becomes_ complex. The reason to write in Java is if the massive Apache + Struts + JBoss/WebLogic/Websphere super-framework is a killer app for your problem, or someone requires it, or you have to plug into some legacy Java. Alex, the original poster, should know already if that's the case. Alex, I've had good results with GD::Graph and the ::Chart:: versions thereof -- except when I let the libgd library differ from the Perl version. I haven't used plot(1) in so long it wasn't called gnuPlot yet, but a shell or Perl that shells out to (gnu)Plot is a classic, as has been mentioned previously. Alternatively, O'Reilly ONLamp has a nice article on simple graphing and analysis with Gnu R posted last month http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/11/17/r_for_statistics.html [OnLamp.com seems to be down at this time!?] There's even a partial interface to Perl via PDL http://search.cpan.org/~cavanaugh/PDL-R-math-0.12/rmath.pd , but it's not for driving charts; PDL has it's own PDL::Graphics::* modules, which is yet another alternative if you have enough data to be worth the efficiencies of PDL (Perl Data Language, which uses the FORTRAN libraries). If you're on one of those Redmond-style OS's, you could probably use the Perl Spreadsheet modules and Win32::Ole modules to command Excel to plot graphs too *shudder*. There's lots more options on http://search.cpan.org/modlist/Graphics , not sure which are relevant to your problem. Cheers, Bill n1vux ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Pretty Graphs with Perl
On 12/6/05, Alex Brelsfoard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does anyone who has/does use GD::Graph know if there's an easy way to embed the output graphs into HTML. Basically I'd like to be able to print a bunch of HTML, then the graph, then some more HTML. I've got the grph coming out all fine and dandy. You have to print out HTML that includes an embedded image, and make the URL for that image be served by your program that prints out the graph. One warning if you shell out in a CGI script: be ABSOLUTELY sure that you send headers before calling the shell. A very common mistake is to print your header then call the shell, not realizing that your print just saved data in a buffer and then waits to send it until either the buffer is full or your program ends. The result is that in your code you see the header printed before the graph, but Apache receives graph before the header and gets upset at you. Cheers, Ben ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Pretty Graphs with Perl
Does anyone who has/does use GD::Graph know if there's an easy way to
embed the output graphs into HTML.
Basically I'd like to be able to print a bunch of HTML, then the
graph,
then some more HTML.
[WDR] The basic techniques are to either
(a) img href=../graphs/123456789.png
Generate the graph to a 2nd file named with a random number (for
security) or a serial number (if no security needed)
my $thisgraph; # uniq name
$this_graph = sprintf %s/%d.png, $graphdir, rand($bignumber)
while -r $thisgraph;
print qq{img href=$this_graph size=$normal_size};
put_to_file($gd-png(), $this_graph);
where put_to_file is something like (from GD::Image png method
notes)
sub put_to_file {
my ($data, $fn)[EMAIL PROTECTED];
my $fh;
open $fh, $fh or die;
binmode $fh;
print $fh $data or die;
close $fh or die;
}
(b) img
href=/scripts/imagemaker?x=17y=42title=%22Foo%20Bar%22xname=Xyname=
Y
Put the code that decides what to do from the Request in a module, and
call it from both the CGI or action module that generates the HTML page
(which generates the img link) and the CGI or action module that
generates the dynamic graphic (in response to the img link). Some
amount of setup work (varies with app) would have to be redone or saved
in DB or some other place (with unique names!), but at least the code is
reused in a module. In this case, you put all the request parameters
that the graph module needs on the IMG URI, or copy all the request
parms to be safe if you don't know; since it's a module, it should know.
One module, one script could do both Page and Image requests, with a arg
difference (or HTTP context wanting text/html or image/*?) determining
which to generate.
A has efficiency advantages in that any shared setup work for the page
and the graphic is done once.
B allows someone to statically deep link or bookmark an image.
B has efficiency advantages if page is likely to be fetched by Lynx or
WWW::Mechanize or spiders who will never fetch the image.
B has efficiency advantages if the pages will be fetched through Akamai
or client proxies, and multiple users may request the same image -- so
the image will be cached outside your server -- dont' recreate it if you
don't have to; this doesn't apply if everyone is local or every request
is unique.
etc ...
Bill n1vux
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Re: [Boston.pm] Pretty Graphs with Perl
On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 04:28:30PM -0500, Ricker, William wrote: (a) img href=../graphs/123456789.png Generate the graph to a 2nd file named with a random number (for security) or a serial number (if no security needed) (b) img href=/scripts/imagemaker?x=17y=42title=%22Foo%20Bar%22xname=Xyname= Y Put the code that decides what to do from the Request in a module, and call it from both the CGI or action module that generates the HTML page (which generates the img link) and the CGI or action module that generates the dynamic graphic (in response to the img link). B has efficiency advantages if the pages will be fetched through Akamai or client proxies, and multiple users may request the same image -- so the image will be cached outside your server -- dont' recreate it if you don't have to; this doesn't apply if everyone is local or every request is unique. You don't have to recreate the image with A, if you cache it on the server. What I do is build a string containing the gnuplot commands, and use an MD5 hash of that string in the image filename. I keep the image file around for a couple hours, and if another request results in the same gnuplot commands, I just skip the call out to gnuplot. Ronald ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] may be OT: Heard of chkinstall, a utility to build RPMs ?
Ranga Nathan wrote: I believe there is a utility to build RPMs from normal tar.gz distro. In order to keep things consistent, I would like to build an RPM of Nagios 2x beta for SuSE9 (intel). But I could not find any download links for it. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks Of course, getting to the site is a problem; it looks like Network Solutions is screwing them over. From WHOIS: Domain ID:D81895216-LROR Domain Name:IZTO.ORG Created On:03-Jan-2002 00:56:28 UTC Last Updated On:02-Jan-2005 02:54:02 UTC Expiration Date:03-Jan-2006 00:56:28 UTC Sponsoring Registrar:Network Solutions LLC (R63-LROR) Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED Looks like the guy tried to switch registrars, and NetSol is punishing him for it. -- John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux Unix ICQ 28611923 / AIM abreauj / JABBER [EMAIL PROTECTED] / YAHOO abreauj Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0xD5C7B5D9 PGP-Key-Fingerprint 72 FB 39 4F 3C 3B D6 5B E0 C8 5A 6E F1 2C BE 99 ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Pretty Graphs with Perl
On Tue, 6 Dec 2005, Ricker, William wrote: (b) img href=/scripts/imagemaker?x=17y=42title=%22Foo%20Bar%22xname=Xyname= Y Put the code that decides what to do from the Request in a module, and call it from both the CGI or action module that generates the HTML page (which generates the img link) and the CGI or action module that generates the dynamic graphic (in response to the img link). Some amount of setup work (varies with app) would have to be redone or saved in DB or some other place (with unique names!), but at least the code is reused in a module. In this case, you put all the request parameters that the graph module needs on the IMG URI, or copy all the request parms to be safe if you don't know; since it's a module, it should know. One module, one script could do both Page and Image requests, with a arg difference (or HTTP context wanting text/html or image/*?) determining which to generate. If you opt for this solution, I strongly recommend not trying to pass serialized data to the script. Instead, store the data somewhere else and give the script the means to look up the data. Otherwise, it is quite likely, given arbitrary amounts of data, that you will find that your URL exceeds 2048 characters, which happens to be the maximum length of a URL in IE. Personally I prefer to just generate a temporary file if I have to store something temporarily (the data or the image). Here I am creating a file in a temporary directory, giving it a name with the datetime and generating module (useful for any developer who is looking at files), and a random string. Thius is quite adequate for our purposes, but of course it isn't suitable for all situations. I have an hourly cron job deleting all files in that directory which are older than one hour. - Ann ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
