From: pm860605@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu (Peter J. McKinney)
Subject: PS-Plot vs. Sigmaplot  (Was: Re: Has anyone tried PS-Plot?)
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 20:24:02 GMT
Organization: Colorado State University
Keywords: graph,plot,data,analysis

In article <4JAN199311431963@utkvx1.utk.edu> djpegg@utkvx1.utk.edu (PEGG, DAVID J) writes:
>From: djpegg@utkvx1.utk.edu (PEGG, DAVID J)
>Subject: Has anyone tried PS-Plot?
>Keywords:  graph,plot,data,analysis
>Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 15:43:00 GMT
>I just received a brochure for a program called PS-Plot: Technical Plotting 
>and Data Processing from Polysoft. It's $299 ($129 competitive upgrade).
>It sounds like a really nice program. It has user defined non-linear
>curve fitting (with up to 10 ind. vars., 10 dep. vars., and 10 params.).
>Many functions for digital signal processing, statistics, mathematical
>transformations. High quality output. 8000 x 256 data cell input.
>etc.
>It's a DOS program with a Windows style interface.
>
>I've never heard of this program. Has anyone used it? I'd be interested
>in any opinions, ie, bugs, ease of use, quality of output,...
>
>I'm using Axum on the IBM right now and I think it's pretty useless.
>PS-Plot sounds much better for basic scientific data analysis and graphing.
>Any opinions appreciated.
>
>Thanks, Joe Dellwo
>

Yes - We have purchased PS-Plot for our laboratory.  There is a $99.00
educational price offer for the product.  Aside from a few quirks I find
this to be the best scientific plotting program for the PC that I have seen.
Having said that, I can mention a few of the difficulties I've had:
        1. The font set is a vector set & may or may not look good on
           your printer.  I still have to see if I can get publication
           quality special characters out of it on my LJIII.  Supposedly,
           Postscript print looks great (according to Polysoft).
        2. Only 16 Colors are available.
        3. No automatic legend generation.
        4. No plot "Template" like in Cricket Graph.
        5. Haven't had much luck importing a figure into Wordperfect 5.1,
           the quality of the lines and/or fonts is always just a bit less
           than desired.  This may be a fault of Wordperfect, however.
        6. No "snap-to" grid or alignment tools for layout.
        7. Worksheet does not behave exactly like a spreadsheet.
        8. 3-D datasets can only be up to 32 by 32 for surface fitting.

This may sound like I'm an unsatisfied customer.  I'm not, but I'd like to
see improvements in these areas.  For $99.00 educational, It's a great deal.
It is *very* fast, has a wonderful graphical interface and can manipulate and
analyze your data in a multitude of fashions.  It is a very impressive
product for being at version 1.1.  The output quality is extremely good
for most things on a laserjet III.  I haven't come across any
ploting situation that could not be handled in one way or another by
PS-Plot. The company is essentially two gentlemen working out of Salt Lake
City, Utah.  Technical support via the telephone has been excellent so far.
For those interested, the Address/phone # is:

                Polysoft
                P.O. Box 526368
                Salt Lake City, UT 84152
                (801) 485-0466

I would like to hear from anyone who has compared PS-Plot to Sigmaplot from
Jandal Scientific.  Sigmaplot is a fair bit more expensive but has been
touted as the best scientific plotting package for DOS available.  I'd like
to knowif the extra cost is merited.  Is it as easy to use as PS-plot?  How
is theoutput quality on laserjets and in output files?  What about font
quality? Is the worksheet a real spreadsheet?  Perhaps some of these
questions can beanswered by people that only have Sigmaplot.  Just to keep
things fair,here's the address/phone for Jandal Scientific:

                Jandal Scientific
                2591 Kerner Blvd.
                San Rafael, CA 94901
                (800) 874-1888
                (415) 453-6700

I hope to hear from other users of these two products.

- Pete

____________________________________________________________________________
| Peter J. McKinney                     pm860605@longs.LANCE.ColoState.Edu |
| Electrohydrodynamic Laboratory                                           |
| Fluid Mechanics and Wind Engineering Program                             |
| Civil Engineering Department                                             |
| Colorado State University                                                |
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