plotters
A Rust drawing library for high-quality data plotting with support for both WASM and native applications.
What is plotters?
Plotters is a Rust drawing library focused on data plotting for both native and WebAssembly applications. It provides tools to render high-quality figures, charts, and plots using various backends like bitmap, SVG, and HTML5 canvas. The library solves the need for performant, flexible visualization within Rust ecosystems, especially for real-time and large-scale data.
Rust developers building data visualization tools, scientific applications, or web-based plotting interfaces that require native performance or WASM compatibility. It's also suitable for researchers and engineers using Jupyter notebooks for interactive data analysis.
Developers choose Plotters for its pure Rust implementation, which offers excellent performance and safety, combined with multi-backend support that seamlessly bridges native and web environments. Its extensible design allows for custom figure types, making it more flexible than many fixed-format plotting libraries.
Overview
A rust drawing library for high quality data plotting for both WASM and native, statically and realtimely 🦀 📈🚀
Use Cases
Best For
- Creating real-time data visualizations in Rust applications
- Building interactive plots for Jupyter notebooks using the evcxr kernel
- Developing web-based charting tools with WebAssembly for better performance
- Rendering high-quality static charts to SVG or bitmap formats
- Visualizing large datasets without down-sampling due to Rust's speed
- Integrating custom plotting logic into GTK or piston-based GUI applications
Not Ideal For
- Projects requiring drag-and-drop chart builders or zero-code visualization tools
- Teams that prioritize rapid prototyping in high-level languages like Python or JavaScript with mature plotting libraries
- Applications needing extensive 3D visualization or complex interactive features beyond basic support
- Environments where dependency management is critical, due to backends split across separate repositories
Pros & Cons
Pros
Supports rendering to SVG, bitmap, HTML5 canvas via WASM, and more, allowing output across platforms from a single codebase, as detailed in the backend examples.
Leverages Rust's speed for real-time visualization of large datasets without down-sampling, making it ideal for data-intensive applications, highlighted in the 'Plotting in Rust' section.
Offers a composable architecture for building custom figures beyond built-in types like line series, enabling unique visualizations through elements and chart contexts.
Compiles to WASM for efficient browser-based plotting with dedicated backends and demos, facilitating web app development without sacrificing performance.
Cons
Key backends like HTML5 canvas and GTK are in separate repositories, complicating dependency management and setup, as noted in the FAQ list.
The developer's guide is a work in progress, and features like console plotting lack full backend support, hindering ease of use and onboarding.
Requires understanding Rust's ownership model and Plotters-specific concepts like drawing areas, making initial usage verbose and challenging, evident in the complex quick start code.
Frequently Asked Questions
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