[Kst] looking good but...

[Cirilo Bernardo]

   I ran across KST while looking for a program to plot my spectral 
data.   My criteria were a friendly interface which at least included 
zoom, the ability to plot several data sets in one frame and to plot 
data sets in different frames, and of course the plots had to be beautiful.

   KST is in the "OK" stage for most of these except the 'beautiful 
plots' criterion.  In particular, the EPS exporter merely jams a bitmap 
into an EPS file - what's the point of that?  Are there any plans to 
make the EPS exporter produce vector code? Why does the color not appear 
in an EPS plot?

   Another neat feature to have would be interpolating algorithms - 
cubic spline and linear would probably be the most useful. When 
interpolating the points to draw a curve, it is also nice to have the 
ability to plot markers at each point.

   I have a tool for reading data files in "ThermoGalactic GRAMS" .spc 
format - I have no objection to contributing this code under the GPL 
although I may need to ask the GRAMS people about it first. The reason I 
was looking for another plotting program is that I truly loathe the 
GRAMS software - outside the USA I need a dongle to operate and it does 
not produce beautiful plots (I use awk+gnuplot to produce my plots).  I 
want an alternative viewer that I can install on any machine I please 
and which can produce a beatiful EPS file without the need for me to 
write a script.  A viewer which runs under both WinDos and Linux would 
be preferable, but I can live with a *nix-only viewer.

Regards,
Cirilo