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Re: XGraph seems to be badly broken :-(



Hi all,

I also find that xgraph is very limited. Can anybody names other more
advanced port-processing programs that use the same input data format?

Thanks.

Thanh

John Heidemann wrote:
> 
> >Hi all,
> >
> >(At least in my Linux RedHat 6.0...)
> >
> >...XGraph seems to be badly broken. Even after applying all the
> >three patches available in the ns-2 download page, it has a number
> >of serious problems and bugs. One of the most obvious (but not the
> >only one): just by moving the XGraph window, the program core dumps (!).
> >Exactly the same thing happens if you popup the 'About' box and then
> >click 'dismiss'. I went to the source page to see if they had a more
> >recent version, and not only they didn't, but also I saw that
> >development of XGraph has been discontinued and abandoned. Of
> >course, the binaries available there didn't work either.
> >
> >Even without these serious bugs, xgraph seems to be very limited,
> >and I cannot see any advantages over other similar tools. Given
> >the huge number of open source, free plotting utilities available
> >in the net, why does ns-2 "support" / "recommend" this one?
> >
> >
> >Just for the record, I am now using Grace (derived from Ace)
> >which looks really nice and has a full-featured GUI as well
> >as advanced batch-processing capabilities. It can do almost
> >anything with your data and it is also very easy to use.
> >
> >Another package (plplot) is a nice plotting library, (rather
> >than standalone utility), with C, C++, Fortran, Python and
> >*Tcl* bindings, which means that plotting capabilities could
> >be easily integrated into ns simulation scripts without much
> >hassle. plplot has a number of output drivers, of course
> >including a postscript one.
> >
> >I really think that xgraph should be replaced with a better
> >plotting tool in the ns 'standard' distribution.
> >
> >
> >Regards,
> >G.
> >--
> >Guillermo Rodriguez Garcia
> ><[email protected]>
> >
> 
> We plan to be releasing xgraph ourselves with some of these bugs fixed
> as a partial solution to some of the problems you mention.
> I agree that xgraph is minimal; we don't plan on enhancing it other
> than just fixing bugs.
> 
> There are a lot of reasons we can't just drop xgraph (some of the test
> suites have saved xgraph output, we have xgraph conversion scripts,
> and a lot of people know xgraph, good or bad).  Although momentum
> means an all-out change is unlikely, I'd be happy to add some pointers
> to other graphing tools to the web pages, and to take conversion
> scripts compatible with ~ns-2/bin/raw2xg, if contributed.
> 
> Please URLs for grace/ace and/or plplot to the list to get things
> started.
> 
> (About the specific xgraph bugs you mention, the "about box" bug seems
> to be Linux specific.  We have some portability patches for xgraph,
> including autoconf support, and we of course welcome patches to fix
> other bugs. :-)
> 
>    -John Heidemann

-- 
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    Nguyen Huu Thanh                      

    Universitaet der Bundeswehr Muenchen  
    Institut fuer informationstechnische Systeme
    Werner-Heisenberg-Weg 39
    85577 Neubiberg                        
    Tel.: +49 89 6004-2279                   
    Email: [email protected]  
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