"You handed a rough idea of what you wanted to a graphic artist," says former biologist Robert Simons, explaining how he came to write the graphing package CoPlot, from CoHort Software, Berkeley, Calif. The artist then would produce an approximation of the conception, says Simons, and lengthy revisions would follow. "It cost a lot of money, it was a pain, and it took a long time. And then the journal would come back and say, `These two lines are too thin, these are too thick, and everything
In the 1980s, however, software developers like Simons began to release scientific graphing and plotting packages for the personal computer (PC) that, as a group, gave the individual scientist increasingly powerful, precise control over his or her data presentation. These packages grew in quantity and sophistication; today, there are a number of very capable software tools designed to meet technical needs. The majority ...
