Matplot++
Data visualization can help programmers and scientists identify trends in their data and efficiently communicate these results with their peers. Modern C++ is being used for a variety of scientific applications, and this environment can benefit considerably from graphics libraries that attend the typical design goals toward scientific data visualization. Besides the option of exporting results to other environments, the customary alternatives in C++ are either non-dedicated libraries that depend on existing user interfaces or bindings to other languages. Matplot++ is a graphics library for data visualization that provides interactive plotting, means for exporting plots in high-quality formats for scientific publications, a compact syntax consistent with similar libraries, dozens of plot categories with specialized algorithms, multiple coding styles, and supports generic backends.
Gallery
Examples
The examples assume we are in the matplot
namespace. Use these examples to understand how to quickly use the
library for data visualization. If you are interested in
understanding how the library works, you can later read the details
in the complete article.
Line Plots
- Line Plot
- Line Plot 3D
- Stairs
- Error Bars
- Area
- Loglog Plot
- Semilogx Plot
- Semilogy Plot
- Function Plot
- Function Plot 3D
- Implicit function
Line Plot
plot(x,y);
Where x
and y
are are any value
ranges.
More examples:
Setters return a reference to *this
to allow method
chaining:
plot(x,y)->line_width(2).color("red");
The examples use free-standing functions to create plots. You can also use a object-oriented style for plots. We discuss these coding styles in the Section Coding Styles.
Line Plot 3D
plot3(x,y);
More examples:
With method chaining:
plot3(x,y)->line_width(2).color("red");
Stairs
stairs(x,y);
More examples:
The stair
object renders the line with stairs
between data points to denote discrete data.
Error Bars
errorbar(x,y,err);
More examples:
The error bar
object includes extra lines to
represent error around data points. Log plots are utility functions
that adjust the x or y axes to a logarithmic scale.
Area
area(Y);
More examples:
Loglog Plot
loglog(x,y);
More examples:
Semilogx Plot
semilogx(x,y);
Semilogy Plot
semilogy(x,y);
Function Plot
fplot(fx);
More examples:
Instead of storing data points, the objects function
line
and string function
store a function as a
lambda function or as a string with an expression. These objects
use lazy evaluation to generate absolute data points. The data is
generated only when the draw
function is called.
Function Plot 3D
fplot(fxy);
More examples:
Implicit function
fplot(fxy);
More examples:
Data Distribution
- Histogram
- Boxplot
- Scatter Plot
- Scatter Plot 3D
- Binscatter
- Plot Matrix
- Parallel Coordinates
- Pie Chart
- Heatmap
- Word Cloud
Histogram
hist(data);
More examples:
The histogram
object creates the histogram edges
and bins when the draw
function is called for the
first time with lazy evaluation. Lazy evaluation avoids calculating
edges unnecessarily in case the user changes the object parameters
before calling draw
. This object includes several
algorithms for automatically delimiting the edges and bins for the
histograms.
Boxplot
boxplot(data);
More examples:
Scatter Plot
scatter(x,y);
More examples:
Scatter plots also depend on the line
object. As
the line object can represent lines with markers, the
scatter
function simply creates markers without the
lines.
Scatter Plot 3D
scatter(x,y,z);
More examples:
Binned Scatter Plots
binscatter(x,y);
More examples:
Binned scatter plots use variations of the histogram algorithms of the previous section as an extra step to place all the data into two-dimensional bins that can be represented with varying colors or sizes. This is useful when there are so many data points that a scatter plot would be impractical for visualizing the data.
Plot Matrix
plotmatrix(X);
More examples:
The Plot Matrix subcategory is a combination of histograms and
scatter plots. It creates a matrix of axes
objects on
the figure
and creates a scatter plot for each pair of
data sets.
Parallel Coordinates
More examples:
The function parallelplot
creates a plot with
Parallel Coordinates. In this type of plot, a parallel
lines
object stores an arbitrary set of axis
objects to represent multi-dimensional data.
Pie Chart
More examples:
Heatmap
More examples:
Word Cloud
More examples:
Word clouds are generated from text or pairs of words and their frequency. After attributing a size proportional to each word frequency, the algorithm to position the labels iterates words from the largest to the smallest. For each word, it spins the word in polar coordinates converted to Cartesian coordinates until it does not overlap with any other word.
By default, the colors and the sizes depend on the word
frequencies. We can customize the colors by passing a third
parameter to the wordcloud
function.
Discrete Data
Bar Plot
More examples:
Pareto Chart
More examples:
Pareto Charts are a type of chart that uses both $y$ axes. The $y_1$ axis is used to represent bars with the data values in descending order. The $y_2$ axis is used to represent the cumulative distribution function of the data in the $y_1$ axis. By default, a Pareto Chart includes up to 10 items or as many items as needed to represent 95% of the cumulative distribution.
If you need Pareto fronts rather than Pareto charts, we refer to Scatter Plots for two-dimensional fronts, Plot matrices for three-dimensional fronts, or Parallel Coordinate Plots for many-objective fronts. These plot subcategories are described in Section Data Distribution. If you also need a tool to calculate these fronts efficiently, we refer to the Pareto Front Library.
Stem Plot
More examples:
Stem Plot 3D
More examples:
Geography
Geoplot
More examples:
For the first geography plot, Matplot++ calls
geoplot()
, which creates a filled polygon with the
world map. This first plot receives the tag "map"
so
that subsequent geography plots recognize there is no need to
recreate this world map.
The data for the world map comes from Natural Earth. They
provide data at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales. The
geoplot
function will initially use the data at the
1:110m scales. The geolimits
function can be used to
update the axis limits for geography plots. The difference between
the usual functions for adjusting axis limits (xlim
and ylim
) and geolimits
is that the
latter will also update the map resolution according to the new
limits for the $x$ and $y$ axis.
The geolimits
function will query the
figure
size and, depending on the new limits for the
axes, update the map to the 1:10m, or 1:50m scales if needed.
Because it would be very inefficient to render the whole world map
at a 1:10m or 1:50m scale only to display a region of this map, the
geolimits
function also crops the data pertinent to
the new region being displayed.
Note that this does not only involve removing data points outside the new limits but it also needs to create new data points on the correct borders to create new polygons coherent with the map entry points in the region. For this reason, the algorithm needs to track all submaps represented as closed polygons in the original world map. If submaps are completely inside or outside the new ranges, we can respectively include or dismiss the data points. However, if the submap is only partially inside the new limits, to generate the correct borders for the polygons, we need to track all points outside the limits to classify the directions of these points outside the limits. We do that by only including points that change quadrants around the new limits so that the map entry points create polygons that look like they would if the complete world map were still being rendered outside these new limits.
If the you are not interested in geographic plots, the build script includes an option to remove the high-resolution maps at 1:10m and 1:50m scales from the library. In this case, the library will always use the map at a 1:110m scale no matter the axis limits.
The function world_cities
returns a list of major
world cities. Its parameters define the minimum distances between
cities in the $x$ and $y$ axes. The greedy_tsp
function is a naive greedy algorithm to find a route between these
cities as a Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). We use the
geoplot
function to draw this route. Note that we use
method chaining to define some further plot properties. Finally,
the text
function includes the city names in the
map.
Geoscatter Plot
More examples:
Geobubble
More examples:
Geodensity Plot
Polar Plots
Polar Line Plot
More examples:
By emplacing a polar plot in the axes
, the
axes
move to a polar mode, where we use the $r$ and
$t$ axis instead of the $x$ and $y$ axis.
From the backend point of view, these axes are an abstraction to the user. The data points in the $r$ and $t$ axis are drawn by converting the positions from the polar coordinates $r$ and $t$ to the Cartesian coordinates $x$ and $y$ with the relationships $x=r \cos{t}$ and $y=r \sin{t}$.
Aside from this conversion, these plot subcategories are analogous to line plots, scatter plots, histograms, quiver plots, and line functions.
Polar Scatter Plot
More examples:
Polar Histogram
More examples:
The function polarhistogram
distributes the data
into the number of bins provided as its second parameter.
Compass
More examples:
Polar Function
More examples:
Contour Plots
Contour
More examples:
All these subcategories depend on the contours
type. They also depend on lazy evaluation for generating the
contour lines. When the function draw
is called in the
contours
class, it preprocesses all contour lines for
a three-dimensional function.
Although it is relatively simple to show a heatmap with the
values for the $z$-axis, calculating contour lines relative to the
$z$-axis is more complex than it might seem at first. We provide
the function contourc
for calculating contour lines.
This function uses an adaptation of the algorithm adopted by
Matplotlib.
The algorithm creates a quad grid defined by the $x$ and $y$ values. It uses this grid to infer a contour line passing through positions with the same $z$ value. The algorithm sweeps through the grid twice to generate these lines. The first sweep looks for lines that start on the boundaries. The second sweep looks for interior closed loops.
Filled contours are closed polygons for pairs of contour levels. Some polygons for filled contours might be holes inside other polygons. The algorithm needs to keep track of these relationships so that we can render the polygons in their accurate order. To avoid an extra step that identifies this relationship between the polygons, the sweeping algorithm already identifies which polygons are holes for each level.
Once we find the quads with the contour line, the line is generated by interpolating the $z$ values around that quad.
Filled Contour
More examples:
Function Contour
More examples:
By default, the function fcontour
will generate 9
contour lines from a lambda function. The functions
contour
and contourf
, on the other hand,
plot contour lines and filled contour lines from a grid of data
points for $x$, $y$, and $z$.
Vector Fields
Quiver
More examples:
All these subcategories depend on the vectors
object type. In a two-dimensional plot, for each value of $x$ and
$y$ with the position of a vector, it also requires the value of
$u$ and $v$ indicating its direction and magnitude. In a
three-dimensional plot, the direction and magnitude are defined by
$u$, $v$, and $w$.
A quiver plot (or velocity plot) shows a grid of vectors whose direction and magnitude are scaled to prevent the overlap between vectors in subsequent quads.
Quiver 3D
Feather
Surfaces
- Surface
- Surface with Contour
- Mesh
- Mesh with Contour
- Mesh with Curtain
- Function Surface
- Function Mesh
- Waterfall
- Fence
- Ribbon
Surface
More examples:
Surface with Contour
More examples:
Mesh
More examples:
Mesh with Contour
More examples:
Mesh with Curtain
More examples:
Function Surface
More examples:
Function Mesh
More examples:
Waterfall
More examples:
Fence
More examples:
Ribbon
More examples:
Graphs
Undirected Graph
More examples:
All these subcategories depend on the network
class. Graphs are abstract structures that represent objects and
relationships between these objects. The objects are represented as
vertices and the relationships are depicted as edges.
In an abstract graph, the vertices have no specific position in
space. Mathematically, a graph does not depend on its layout.
However, the graph layout has a large impact on its
understandability. The network
class can calculate
appropriate positions for graph vertices with several algorithms:
Kamada Kawai algorithm, Fruchterman-Reingold algorithm, circle
layout, random layout, and automatic layout.
The implementation of the Kamada Kawai and Fruchterman-Reingold algorithms depend on the NodeSoup library. The automatic layout uses the Kamada Kawai algorithm for small graphs and the Fruchterman-Reingold algorithm for larger graphs.
Directed Graph
More examples:
Images
Image Show
More examples:
These subcategories depend on the matrix
class. The
matrix
class can have up to four matrices. If it has
only one matrix, it is represented with a colormap. If it has three
matrices, they represent the red, green, and blue channels. If it
has four matrices, the fourth matrix represents an alpha channel to
control the transparency of each pixel.
We use the CImg library to load and save images. CImg can handle many common image formats as long as it has access to the appropriate libraries. The Matplot++ build script will look at compile-time for the following optional libraries: JPEG, TIFF, ZLIB, PNG, LAPACK, BLAS, OpenCV, X11, fftw3, OpenEXR, and Magick++. The build script will attempt to link all libraries from this list to Matplot++.
Matplot++ includes a few convenience functions
to manipulate matrices with images: imread
,
rgb2gray
, gray2rgb
,
imresize
, and imwrite
. All these
functions work with lists of matrices.
Image Matrix
More examples:
Scaled Image
More examples:
Annotations
The annotations category is meant to create individual objects
on the plot rather than representations of data sets. An important
difference between the annotations category and other categories is
that, by default, the annotations do not replace the plot that
already exists in the axes
object, even if the user
does not call the hold
function.
Text
More examples:
Text with Arrow
More examples:
Rectangle
More examples:
The rectangle object can have a border curvature from $0$ to $1$. We can also annotate with text, arrows, polygons, and lines.
Filled Polygon
Ellipse
Textbox
Arrow
More examples:
Line
Appearance
As a convenience, the colors.h
header contains many
functions to generate colors from strings and vice-versa.
Labels
Title
More examples:
Subplot Title
More examples:
X Label
More examples:
Y Label
More examples:
Z Label
More examples:
Legend
More examples:
Axis
X Limits
More examples:
Y Limits
More examples:
Z Limits
More examples:
Adjust Axis
More examples:
Box
More examples:
Grid
Grid
More examples:
X Ticks
More examples:
Y Ticks
More examples:
Z Ticks
More examples:
X Tick Labels
More examples:
Y Tick Labels
More examples:
X Tick Format
More examples:
Y Tick Format
More examples:
Z Tick Format
More examples:
X Tick Angle
More examples:
Y Tick Angle
More examples:
Multiplot
Hold
More examples:
YY-axis
More examples:
Color Order
More examples:
Subplots
Unlike other libraries, subplots uses 0-based indices.
More examples:
Tiled Layout
Our tiling functions are convenience shortcuts for the subplot functions. If there is no room for the next tile, we automatically rearrange the axes and increase the number of subplot rows or columns to fit the next tile. Use subplots for more control over the subplots.
More examples:
Colormaps
Colormap
More examples:
Color Bar
More examples:
RGB Plot
More examples:
Camera
View
More examples:
Lighting
More examples:
Figure Object
More examples:
Line Specs
Axes Object
More examples:
Clear Axes
More examples:
Exporting
Saving (Manually)
The interactive plot window has a widget to save the current figure. Because this widget uses the same backend as the one used to produce the interactive image, the final image matches closely what the user sees in the window.
Saving (Programatically)
You can programatically save the figure in a number of formats
with the save
function:
save(filename);
or
save(filename, fileformat);
More examples:
The first option (save(filename)
) infers the
appropriate file format from the filename extension. In both cases
(save(filename)
and
save(filename,fileformat)
), this function temporarily
changes the backend to a non-interactive backend appropriate to
draw the figure. A different backend is used for each format and,
depending on the format, the final image does not necessarily match
what is on the interactive plot window. The reason is that some
file formats purposefully do not include the same features.
For instance, consider the bar chart generated by
vector<double> x = {29, 17, 14, 13, 12, 4, 11};
bar(x);
If we export the image with
save("barchart.svg");
we get the vector graphics
Exporting the image with
save("barchart.txt");
generates a representation of the image appropriate for text or markdown files, such as
30 +-----------------------------------------------------------+
| ******* + + + + + + |
| * * |
25 |-+ * * +-|
| * * |
| * * |
20 |-+ * * +-|
| * * |
| * ******** |
15 |-+ * ** * +-|
| * ** * ******* |
| * ** * * ******** ******* |
| * ** * * ** * * * ******* |
10 |-+ * ** * * ** * * * * * +-|
| * ** * * ** * * * * * |
| * ** * * ** * * * * * |
5 |-+ * ** * * ** * * ******** * * +-|
| * ** * * ** * * ** * * * |
| * + ** + * * + ** + * * + ** + * * + * |
0 +-----------------------------------------------------------+
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
As the last example, saving an image with
save("barchart.tex");
would save the image in a format appropriate to embed in latex documents, such as
This exports the image in a format in which the labels are replaced by latex text so that the plot fits the rest of the document.
Coding styles
Member vs. Free-standing Functions
Like in Matplotlib, we support two coding styles: Free-standing functions and an Object-oriented interface.
-
Freestanding functions:
- We call functions to create plots on the current axes
- The global current
axes
object is the currentaxes
object in the current figure in the global figure registry - For instance, one can use
plot(y);
to create a line plot on the current axes (or create a newaxes
object if needed). - Also, one can use
plot(ax,y);
to create a line plot on theaxes
objectax
. - This is less verbose for small projects and quick tests.
- The library looks for existing axes to create the plot.
-
Object-oriented interface:
- We explicitly create figures and call methods on them
- For instance, one can use
ax->plot(y);
to plot on theaxes
objectax
- We can create the same line plot on the current axes by
auto ax = gca(); ax->plot(y);
- This is less verbose and provides better control in large projects where we need to pass these objects around
- The user manages axes handles containing plots.
Assuming the user is explicitly managing the axes to create plots in another function, a more complete example of these styles could be
// Free-standing functions
auto ax = gca();
plot(ax, x, y)->color("red").line_width(2);
my_function(ax);
and
// Object-oriented interface
auto ax = gca();
ax->plot(x, y)->color("red").line_width(2);
my_function(ax);
Both examples would generate the same plot. All free-standing
functions are templated functions that use meta-programming to call
the main function on the current axes
object. If the
first parameter is not an axes_handle
, it will get an
axes_handle
from the figure registry with
gca
(Section Figures and Axes) and forward all parameters to the
function in this axes
object. If the first parameter
is an axes_handle
, the template function will forward
all parameters, but the first one, to this axes
object. This use of templates for the free-standing functions keeps
both coding styles maintainable by the developers.
Note that, because the example needs the axes
object for the function my_function
, we also need to
get a reference to the axes
object with the
free-standing functions. In that case, the free-standing functions
are not less verbose than the object-oriented interface.
To adhere to free-standing functions, we could create two
versions of my_function
: one that receives an
axes_handle
, and a second version that would get an
axes_handle
from the figure registry and call the
first version. If my_function
is going to be exposed
to other users as a library, this could be a convenience to these
users. However, notice that this is only moving the verbosity from
the main function to my_function
. In fact, this is how
the free-standing functions in Matplot++ work.
Reactive figures
There are also two modes for figures: reactive (or interactive)
mode and quiet mode. Figures in reactive mode are updated whenever
any of their child objects change. This happens through the
touch
function, that gets called on any child object
when it changes its appearance. This creates an interactive mode in
which figures are updated as soon as we adjust their properties. If
we combine interactive figures with free-standing functions, we
have a "Matlab-like style" for plots. This is a coding pattern
where the figure registry works as a stream for plots. The problem
with this coding style is that the user might unnecessarily create
useless intermediary plots.
Figures in quiet mode are updated by calling the functions
draw()
or show()
(Section Figures and Axes). Unless
these functions are called, nothing changes in the figure. The
combination of the object-oriented coding style and quiet mode is
the "OO-Matplotlib-like style" for plots. This is a coding style in
which the user explicitly decides when the plot is shown or
updated. This is beneficial to applications that cannot waste
computational resources on intermediary figures that might not be
valuable to the application.
We generally use free-standing functions with reactive mode and the object-oriented interface with quiet mode. By default, new figures are in reactive mode, unless it is using an non-interactive backend. One can turn this reactive mode on and off with:
ion()
orioff()
free-standing functionsreactive(bool)
orquiet(bool)
function on thefigure
objectfigure(true)
orfigure(false)
when explicitly creating a new figure
A more complete example of the reactive mode would be:
// Reactive mode
auto f = gcf(false);
auto ax = f->gca();
auto p = ax->plot(ax, x, y); // draws once
p->color("red").line_width(2); // draws twice more
wait(); // pause console
For convenience, the examples in Section Plot Categories use the
reactive mode. The wait
function pauses the console
until the user interacts with the plot window. If the backend is
based on process pipes, because these are unidirectional, closing
the window is not enough to resume. The user needs to use the
console to unblock execution. A similar example is quiet mode would
be
// Quiet mode
auto f = gcf(true);
auto ax = f->gca();
auto p = ax->plot(x,y); // does not draw
p->color("red").line_width(2); // does not draw
f->show(); // draw only once and pause console
In this example, the figure is only updated once. The user could
replace the show
function with the draw
function, but the window would close as soon as execution
completes. It is important to use wait()
and
show()
with caution. These functions are meant for
some particular executables so that an interactive plot does not
close before the user can see it. It is probably unreasonable to
call these functions inside a library because the user would have
to manually interfere with the execution to continue.
Method Chaining
To support a more compact syntax, the library allows method chaining on plot objects. For instance, we can create a simple line plot and modify its appearance by
// Using the line handle
auto p = plot(x,y,"--gs");
p->line_width(2);
p->marker_size(10);
p->marker_color("b");
p->marker_face_color({.5,.5,.5});
or
// Method chaining
plot(x,y,"--gs")->line_width(2).marker_size(10).marker_color("b").marker_face_color({.5,.5,.5});
The first code snippet works because plot
returns a
line_handle
to the object in the axes
. We
can use this line handle to modify the line plot. Whenever we
modify a property, the setter function calls touch
,
which will draw
the figure again if it is in reactive
mode. The second option works because setters return a reference to
*this
rather than void.
Ranges
The plotting functions work on any range of elements convertible
to double
. For instance, we can create a line plot
from a set of elements by
set<int> y = {6,3,8,2,5};
plot(y);
Any object that has the functions begin
and
end
are considered iterable ranges. Most axes
object
subclasses use vector<double>
or
vector<vector<double>>
to store their
data. For convenience, the common.h
header file
includes the aliases vector_1d
and
vector_2d
to these data types.
These conversions also work on ranges of ranges:
vector<set<int>> Y = {{6,3,8,2,5},{6,3,5,8,2}};
plot(Y);
Unfortunately, because of how templated functions work, one exception is initializer lists. Initializer lists only work for functions that are explicitly defined for them.
Common Utilities
The headers common.h
and colors.h
include a number of utilities we use in our examples. These include
naive functions to generate and manipulate vectors and strings;
handle RGBA color arrays; convert points to and from polar
coordinates; read files to strings; write strings to files;
calculate gradients; read, write, and manipulate images; and
generate vectors with random numbers. Although some of these
functions might be helpful, most functions only operate on
vector<double>
and they are not intended to be a
library of utilities. The sole purpose of these algorithms is to
simplify the examples.
Motivation and Details
If you are interested in understanding how the library works, you can read the details in the complete article. It describes the relationship between its main objects, the backend interface, how to create new plot categories, limitations, and compares this library with similar alternatives.
Integration
CMake (manual download)
Check if you have Cmake 3.14+ installed:
cmake -version
Download the whole project and add the subdirectory to your Cmake project:
add_subdirectory(matplotplusplus)
When creating your executable, link the library to the targets you want:
add_executable(my_target main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(my_target PUBLIC matplot)
Add this header to your source files:
#include <matplot/matplot.h>
CMake (automatic download)
Check if you have Cmake 3.14+ installed:
cmake -version
Install CPM.cmake and then:
CPMAddPackage(
NAME matplotplusplus
GITHUB_REPOSITORY alandefreitas/matplotplusplus
)
# ...
target_link_libraries(my_target PUBLIC matplot)
Then add this header to your source files:
#include <matplot/matplot.h>
Other build systems
Right now, it really doesn't have support for anything other than CMake. If you really want to use it in another build system you pretty much have to rewrite the entire build script.
If you're not using Cmake, your project needs to include the
headers and compile all source files in the source
directory. You also need to
link with the dependencies described in source/3rd_party/CMakeLists.txt
.
Then add this header to your source files:
#include <matplot/matplot.h>
Dependencies
This project requires C++17. You can see other dependencies in
source/3rd_party/CMakeLists.txt
. CMake
will try to solve everything for you.
- Required
- olvb/nodesoup (bundled; but you can define
WITH_SYSTEM_NODESOUP=ON
in the cmake command line to use a system-provided version of nodesoup) - dtschump/CImg (bundled; but you can define
WITH_SYSTEM_CIMG=ON
in the cmake command line to use a system-provided version of CImg) - Gnuplot (for the Gnuplot backend only)
- olvb/nodesoup (bundled; but you can define
- Optional (for images)
- JPEG
- TIFF
- ZLIB
- PNG
- LAPACK
- BLAS
- FFTW
- OpenCV
- OPENEXR
- MAGICK
There's an extra target matplot_opengl
that
exemplifies how an OpenGL backend could be
implemented. It's not a complete backend. If you want to test it,
only then there are some extra dependencies.
- Dependencies for the OpenGL backend
- OpenGL
- GLAD
- GLFW3
Backends
Coming up with new backends is a continuous process. See the
complete article for a description of the backend interface, a description of the current
default backend (Gnuplot pipe), and what's involved in possible
new
backends. See the directory source/matplot/backend
for some
examples. Also, have a look at this example test/backends/main.cpp
.
If you're in a hurry, here is a summary of the backends we have and the backends we have been considering or working on:
- Gnuplot
- Pros: It seems to be working for everyone. In practice, this is current default backend you'll get right now.
- Cons: Pipes are comparatively slow and unidirectional
- OpenGL
- Pros: Efficient for many FPS
- Cons: Unacceptably blocks the main thread on some operating systems
- AGG
- Pros: Great for vector graphics
- Cons: Unmaintained, 2D only, and non-interactive by itself
- Qt / QPainter
- Cons: Unacceptably blocks the main thread on some operating systems
- OpenCV
- Elements
Contributing
There are many ways in which you can contribute to this library:
- Testing the library in new environments
- Contributing with interesting examples
- Designing new backends see 1, 2, 3
- Finding problems in this documentation
- Writing algorithms for new plot categories
- Finding bugs in general
- Whatever idea seems interesting to you
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