GnuPlot VS D3.js

Compare GnuPlot VS D3.js and see what are their differences

Electe

Discover Electe, our data analytics platform dedicated to SMEs. Don't let your data go unused, take your business into the future! featured

Contents:

» Base Details
» Videos
» Reviews
» Alternatives

GnuPlot

Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility.

D3.js

D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. D3 helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG, and CSS.

Landing page //
2022-12-13

Landing page //
2023-07-11

D3 allows you to bind arbitrary data to a Document Object Model (DOM), and then apply data-driven transformations to the document. For example, you can use D3 to generate an HTML table from an array of numbers. Or, use the same data to create an interactive SVG bar chart with smooth transitions and interaction.

D3 is not a monolithic framework that seeks to provide every conceivable feature. Instead, D3 solves the crux of the problem: efficient manipulation of documents based on data. This avoids proprietary representation and affords extraordinary flexibility, exposing the full capabilities of web standards such as HTML, SVG, and CSS. With minimal overhead, D3 is extremely fast, supporting large datasets and dynamic behaviors for interaction and animation. D3’s functional style allows code reuse through a diverse collection of official and community-developed modules.

GnuPlot

Website: gnuplot.info
$ Details: -
Platforms: -

Edit details

D3.js

Website: d3js.org
$ Details
Platforms: JavaScript

Edit details

GnuPlot features and specs

Highly Customizable
GnuPlot offers extensive customization options for creating plots, allowing users to tweak almost every aspect of the graph, including colors, labels, line styles, and more.
Scriptable
GnuPlot can be driven by scripts, making it convenient for automating complex plots and integrating with other software workflows.
Wide Range of Output Formats
It supports many output formats such as PNG, PDF, SVG, and EPS, making it easy to generate graphics for different purposes like presentations, publications, and web content.
Cross-Platform
GnuPlot runs on multiple operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, ensuring that it can be used in diverse computing environments.
Complex Plotting Capabilities
GnuPlot supports a wide variety of plots, including 2D and 3D plots, histograms, heatmaps, and more, which caters to the needs of advanced visualization requirements.
Performance
GnuPlot is efficient and can handle large datasets with ease, offering fast rendering times which is crucial when dealing with complex visualizations.
Free and Open Source
Being free and open-source software, GnuPlot is accessible to everyone, and users can modify the source code to suit their needs.

Possible disadvantages of GnuPlot

Steep Learning Curve
GnuPlot has a complex syntax and a steep learning curve, especially for beginners who may find it difficult to get started without substantial effort.
Limited GUI
GnuPlot lacks a full-featured graphical user interface (GUI), making it less user-friendly for those who prefer point-and-click interactions over scripting.
Documentation
While comprehensive, the documentation can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate for new users trying to find specific information quickly.
Date Handling
Handling and formatting dates can be cumbersome in GnuPlot, requiring more manual setup compared to other dedicated plotting tools.
Interactive Features
GnuPlot's interactive plotting capabilities are limited compared to other modern plotting tools that offer more dynamic and real-time interactivity.
Integration
Integration with some modern programming environments and languages may not be as seamless as with other plotting libraries specifically designed for those ecosystems (e.g., Matplotlib in Python).

D3.js features and specs

Powerful Visualization
D3.js allows for the creation of highly customized and interactive data visualizations, harnessing the full power of web standards like SVG, Canvas, and HTML.
Data Binding
It offers robust support for data-driven transformations and binding, enabling intuitive connections between data sets and DOM elements.
Community and Ecosystem
A large and active community contributes to tutorials, plugins, and tools, which can significantly simplify the development process.
Flexibility
D3.js is highly flexible, providing low-level manipulation capabilities without being tied to any specific chart types or patterns.
Performance
It is highly optimized for performance, allowing for efficient rendering of complex visualizations even with large data sets.

Possible disadvantages of D3.js

Steep Learning Curve
D3.js has a steep learning curve due to its low-level nature and requires a solid understanding of JavaScript, DOM manipulation, and data concepts.
Complexity
Creating complex visualizations can be time-consuming and require a significant amount of custom code, making it less approachable for quick, simple tasks.
Browser Compatibility
Although widely supported, some D3.js features may have inconsistent behavior across different browsers, requiring additional testing and debugging.
Documentation
While extensive, D3.js documentation can be challenging for beginners to navigate and understand, causing misunderstandings and slower development times.
Dependency Management
The library itself is modular, but managing dependencies and integrating D3.js with other JavaScript frameworks or libraries can sometimes be problematic.

GnuPlot videos

+ Add

Gnuplot Introduction

D3.js videos

+ Add

Data Visualization with D3.js - Full Tutorial Course

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GnuPlot and D3.js)

GnuPlot

D3.js

Technical Computing

100 100%

Technical Computing

0% 0

Charting Libraries

0 0%

Charting Libraries

100% 100

Numerical Computation

100 100%

Numerical Computation

0% 0

Data Visualization

14 14%

Data Visualization

86% 86

User comments

Share your experience with using GnuPlot and D3.js. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare GnuPlot and D3.js

GnuPlot Reviews

We have no reviews of GnuPlot yet.
Be the first one to post

D3.js Reviews

6 JavaScript Charting Libraries for Powerful Data Visualizations in 2023

Depending on your requirements, the best JavaScript library is D3.js, as it’s by far the most customizable. However, it’s also really complex and difficult to master. Plus, it’s not as compatible with TypeScript as it is with JavaScript, which can be off-putting for some developers. If you’d prefer a less complex library that you can use with TypeScript, ECharts, and...

Source: embeddable.com

15 JavaScript Libraries for Creating Beautiful Charts

When we think of charting today, D3.js is the first name that comes up. Being an open source project, D3.js definitely brings many powerful features that were missing in most of the existing libraries. Features like dynamic properties, Enter and Exit, powerful transitions, and syntax familiarity with jQuery make it one the best JavaScript libraries for charting. Charts in...

Source: www.sitepoint.com

Top 20 Javascript Libraries

D3 stands for Data-Driven Documents. With D3, you can apply data-driven transformations to DOM objects. The keyword with D3 is ‘data-driven,’ which means documents are manipulated depending on the data received. Data can be received in any format and bound with DOM objects. D3 is very fast and supports dynamic behavior for animation and interactions. There are plenty of...

Source: hackr.io

20+ JavaScript libraries to draw your own diagrams (2022 edition)

D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. Right now, I would say is the most popular library of its kind.

Source: modeling-languages.com

15 data science tools to consider using in 2021

Another open source tool, D3.js is a JavaScript library for creating custom data visualizations in a web browser. Commonly known as D3, which stands for Data-Driven Documents, it uses web standards, such as HTML, Scalable Vector Graphics and CSS, instead of its own graphical vocabulary. D3's developers describe it as a dynamic and flexible tool that requires a minimum amount...

Source: searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, D3.js seems to be a lot more popular than GnuPlot. While we know about 167 links to D3.js, we've tracked only 5 mentions of GnuPlot. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

GnuPlot mentions (5)

Question about Project Management
To some extent it extends the concept of tasks which only can be reasonably executed after the completion of other ones (though results of branches eventually may join each other) and offers an additional assisting birds' eye visual of projects. So far, I'm aware about the documentation on worg interfacing org-taskjuggler and taskjuggler, as well as a video tutorial interfacing gnuplot instead. Source: about 2 years ago
How do I make a transparent background on .ps or .eps file imported to groff
Gnuplot is a program to plot diagrams. The Commands issued to use it don't change regardless if it is used in Linux/Windows/MacOS and it comes with less dependencies than a Spread sheet, or a statistics program. This is why I started to Become comfortable with it, and venture out some of its features. Here, "conditional plot" referred to "the diagram only displays a Thing/uses a pixel if the value in the table... Source: about 2 years ago
Drawing graphs and diagrams
Or, does drawing diagrams refers to plotting data, but neither using matplotlib, nor gnuplot (export to .svg, .pdf, .png; pstricks, tikz to mention a few options)? Source: about 2 years ago
Are specific softwares avialable that are suitable for converting different diagrams, graphs and mindmaps to latex codes?
There may the occasion you actually need the data from a publication, and want to plot them altogether with data newly collected data in one diagram in common. An overlay, though possible, can become tricky (scaling, centering, alignment, etc.) and plotting all data in a diagram generated from scratch (gnuplot/octave, matplotlib, Origin, ...) exported as an illustration in the usual formats (.pdf/.png), or... Source: over 2 years ago
Introducing Graphs
Have you looked at the graphing capabilities of Octave or Gnuplot? Gnuplot in particular has a lot of options, and a GUI for those who want it. Source: over 2 years ago

D3.js mentions (167)

IO Devices and Latency
Do you mean something for data visualization, or tricks condensing large data sets with cursors? https://d3js.org/ Best of luck =3. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
2024 Nuxt3 Annual Ecosystem Summary🚀
Document address: D3.js Official Document. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
100+ Must-Have Web Development Resources
D3.js: One of the most popular JavaScript visualization libraries. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
What are npm Peer Dependencies and how to use them?
A Dependency is an npm package that our code depends on in order to be able to run. Some popular packages that can be added as dependencies are lodash, D3, and chartjs. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
Introducing RacingBars 📊
RacingBars is an open-source, light-weight (~45kb gzipped), easy-to-use, and feature-rich javascript library for bar chart race, based on D3.js. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago