PLplot

PLplot is a portable plotting library designed to produce high-quality scientific graphics. It provides a C-based API that can be embedded in applications to generate publication-ready 2D and 3D plots. The library aims to be cross-platform and extensible, with bindings and interfaces that allow use from other programming languages.

Key features include support for a wide range of plot types such as line, scatter, bar, area, histogram, contour, and 3D surface plots. It offers control over axes, scales (linear and logarithmic), tick marks, labeling, legends, and annotations, as well as color maps and palettes for customizing appearance. PLplot supports multi-panel layouts and can handle input data from arrays or external sources. The API emphasizes portability and consistent rendering across devices.

Device drivers form a core aspect of PLplot. The library can render to interactive backends for on-screen visualization and to a variety of vector and raster formats. Supported output options commonly include PostScript, PDF, SVG, PNG, and other image formats, along with on-screen backends for X11 and other windowing systems. The device abstraction enables output to both screens and publication-quality graphics without changing plotting code.

PLplot is open-source and available under a permissive license. It is distributed with source code and build configurations for common platforms, and it can be built using standard GNU build tools on Unix-like systems as well as on Windows and macOS. The project maintains documentation and examples to assist users in integrating plots into their software workflows.