Other Software
aplot
aplot is a script I wrote, and that a few people have found useful, that takes a template string to gnuplot, and iterates over a list of files, sending the line to gnuplot to animate it. It's useful when you have a series of files representing timesteps, and the files can be read and plotted by gnuplot. If you have a situation like that, try out this script. The script itself was made "quick and dirty", and has limitations, but I'm posting it here because several people have found it useful. The first thing you do when you launch the program is to launch it with a filename as a parameter. This will be the file that the script saves settings to, so you don't have to type them in each time. E.g.: "python aplot savefile"Once the program is open, press 1 to enter the filename format. Substitute in %n for the file number. For example, if your files are named Data_0000 through Data_0100, you'd enter in "Data_%n".
Then you'll want to press 2 to enter in the gnuplot line. This line will be sent to gnuplot, with the special sequences %f substituted in for the filename, and %n for the number if you need it. For example, I might put in " plot [1:10] '%f' "
The program will start with file 1 (Data_1), but in this example case, the number is padded to a length of 4, so we'll set option 6, padding, to 4.
Pressing enter will send the current line to gnuplot, arrow keys will move backwards and forwards through the files. Press 5 to save the filename and parameters to the file we specified when launching.