Developers

Many developers have contributed to PLplot over its long history. The list of the current core developers is here. Activity graphics for the last 5 years for a historically complete list of developers is at the PLplot contributor summary page at Open HUB. In addition many other individuals have contributed to PLplot by providing patches, finding bugs, or requesting features.

Additional libraries

The PLplot library depends on some other open source libraries provided by the community.

PLplot core dependencies

• Qhull: computes the convex hull, Delaunay triangulation, Voronoi diagram, halfspace intersection about a point, furthest-site Delaunay triangulation, and furthest-site Voronoi diagram.
• shapelib: allows the subset of our API concerned with maps to read maps in shapefile format.

PLplot device-driver dependencies

N.B. each device driver is an optional component of PLplot.

• The aquaterm device driver depends on AquaTerm.app; a Mac OS X plotting front end (graphics terminal) written using Objective-C and the Cocoa API.
• The cairo device driver depends on Pango; a library for laying out and rendering of text, with an emphasis on internationalization.
• The cairo device driver depends on cairo; a 2D graphics library with support for multiple output devices. Currently supported output targets include the X Window System, Quartz, Win32, image buffers, PostScript, PDF, and SVG file output.
• The gd and wingcc device drivers depend on FreeType; a free, high-quality, and portable font engine.
• The gd device driver depends on libgd; an open-source code library for the dynamic creation of images by programmers.
• The pdf device driver depends on libHaru; a free, cross-platform, open-source library for generating PDF files.
• The psttf device driver depends on LASi; a library that provides a C++ stream output interface (with operator <<) for creating Postscript documents that can contain characters from any of the scripts and symbol blocks supported in Unicode and by Owen Taylor's Pango layout engine.
• The Qt device driver depends on Qt; a multi-platform toolkit library for creating graphical user interfaces.
• The wxwidgets device driver depends on wxWidgets; a GUI and tools library that lets developers create GUI applications for Win32, Mac OS X, GTK+, X11, Motif, WinCE, and more using one codebase.

Tools

The development of the Plplot project is supported by the use of several open source tools.

• CMake, a cross-platform, open-source build system.
• SWIG, a software development tool that connects programs written in C and C++ with a variety of high-level programming languages.
• pkg-config, a helper tool used when compiling applications and libraries.
• DocBook, an XML schema which is particularly well suited for writing documentation of computer hardware and software.