PyX Graphics for Julia

This is a Julia wrapper of the PyX plotting and TeX graphics library from Python.

It is a work in progress, broken, and will set your computer on fire. See also the TODO file.

Source Code: https://github.com/bnewbold/PyX.jl

Travis CI: https://travis-ci.org/bnewbold/PyX.jl

Example

using PyX

g = graph.graphxy(width=8)
plot(g, graph_data_function("y(x)=sin(x)/x", min=-15, max=15))
writePDFfile(g, "example_graph.pdf")

Plotting works automagically from within Jupyter and other graphic interfaces:

Jupyter Example Image

There are many (ported) examples in the ./examples/ directory of this repository. See the Python PyX upstream documentation for example outputs: http://pyx.sourceforge.net/

For pipeGS (ghostscript file conversion) output "device" options, see: http://www.ghostscript.com/doc/current/Devices.htm

Dependencies and Python Version

You'll obviously need the underlying Python PyX library installed, plus any dependencies (eg, LaTeX and Ghostscript). These are pretty huge and complex packages to install! Use something like Debian's apt or Homebrew on OS X. No idea how to get this set up on Windows or other platforms.

NOTE: PyX versions starting with 0.13 are Python3-only. PyX versions 0.12.1 and earlier are Python2-only. This split happened back in 2013. This wrapper will work with versions on either side of the split, but the newer versions (starting with PyX 0.14) support SVG and newer features. Unfortunately, switching Julia's PyCall wrapper from Python2 to Python3 is all or nothing. Careful! If you decide to do this, run:

julia> ENV["PYTHON"] = "/usr/bin/python3" # Or your local full path
julia> Pkg.build("PyCall")

Installation

This package is not (yet) listed in the official Julia MANIFEST.jl index, so you'll need to install it "unregistered" style:

julia> Pkg.clone("https://github.com/bnewbold/PyX.jl")
julia> using PyX

To run tests, do something like:

JULIA_LOAD_PATH=src julia test/runtests.jl

Differences from Python

All the expected Julia/Python differences apply:

use Julia's nothing instead of Python's None
use 1-indexing instead of 0-indexing, and require end in slice syntax
function calls like writeEPSfile(c, filename) instead of object method calls like c.writeEPSfile(filename).

Note that the string code snippets that go into graph_data_function are still Python code, not Julia.

There doesn't seem to be an easy way to handle nested Python modules as nested modules in Julia, so there can only be a single . separator in variable and function names. This has been worked around by using the underscore character (_) instead of . for all but the last separator. So, eg, graph_axis.split() instead of graph.axis.split() and color_rgb.red instead of color.rgb.red.

To avoid namespace collisions or confusion with built-in Julia functions the following functions (only) have pyx_ preprended to the function name:

pyx_fill, pyx_append, pyx_insert, pyx_text

function is also a reserved keyword in Julia, so use graph_data_function instead of graph_data.function.

License

Following the license of the underlying PyX python library, this wrapper is licensed under the GNU GPL Version 2 (or later). See the LICENSE file, and the upstream licensing note: http://pyx.sourceforge.net/license.html