JKQtPlotter/README.md

JKQTPlotter - A Qt Plotting Library

This is an extensive C++ library for data visualization, plotting and charting for Qt (>= 5.0, tested with Qt up to 6.3). It is feature-rich but self-contained and only depends on the Qt framework.

This software is licensed under the term of the GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1 (LGPL 2.1) or above.

Main Features

• 2D Plotter widget class JKQTPlotter:
  • high-quality plotting
  • no other dependencies than Qt >= 5.0 (CImg and OpenCV are optional dependencies)
  • highly customizable axes/grids (linear/log, date/time, custom ticks ...)
  • JKQTMathText: integrated LaTeX parser (pure C++, no dependencies) to render mathematical equations in axis labels, ticks, ...
  • extensive user-interactions pre-programmed (several zooming modes, selecting regions, custom context menus, switch graph visibility, ...)
  • full print and export (PDF,PNG,...) support with preview and parametrization out-the-box
  • highly customizable look and feel
  • supports the Qt layout system for graphs and allows to symchronize several graphs with each other
• centralized data management in an internal datastore JKQTPDatastore:
  • data organized by columns, can also represent image data (ropw-major)
  • allows to reuse a column in several graphs
  • access via Qt's model view framework
  • external or internal datasets
  • complete with GUI (table view)
  • export capabilities (e.g. to CSV, SYLK, ...)
  • C++ standard iterator interface
  • statistics library (basic statistics, boxplots, histograms, kernel density estimates, regression analysis, polynomial fitting)
• large variety of graphs that can be added to a plot, e.g.:
  • scatter plot and parametrized scatter plots (e.g. bubble charts)
  • line graphs, step graphs, impulses
  • filled curves
  • barcharts (also stacked)
  • extensive support for different styles of error indicators
  • integrated mathematical function parser for parsed function plots (with intelligent rendering algorithm)
  • line/scatter graphs can also be based on C/C++ functions instead of data series (C++11 support!)
  • statistical plots) (e.g. boxplots, violinplots, ...)
  • large variety of image plots (inclusing different color-scale modes, RGBA-plots, overlays/masks)
  • contour plots
  • vector field graphs/quiver plots
  • financial graphs (candlestick/OHLC)
  • geometric forms (lines, rectangles, polygons, circles, bezier-curves, ...) / annotations (labels, text, ranges, ...)
  • can be easily extended by deriving a new graph from JKQTPPlotElement, JKQTPPlotAnnotationElement, JKQTPGeometricPlotElement, JKQTPGraph
• optional: OpenCV interface, CImg interfaces
• CMake-based build system
• extensive set of Examples/Tutorials
• extensive doxygen-generated Documentation

Documentation

A Documentation (auto-)generated with doxygen from the trunk source code can be found here: http://jkriege2.github.io/JKQTPlotter/index.html

There are also some subpage of general intetest:

• TODO List
• Release Notes & Version Overview

Examples

There is a large set of usage examples (with explanations for each) and tutorials in the folder ./examples/. All test-projects are Qt-projects that use tcmake to build. Some of them are also available with additional qmake build-files.

In addition: The Screenshots-folder contains several screenshots, partly taken from the provided examples, but also from other software using this libarary (e.g. QuickFit 3.0)

Building Using CMake

JKQTPlotter contains two different build systems: A modern CMake-based build and an older (and deprecated!) QMake-based build (which works out of the box with Qt 5.x and QT 6.x). Both systems are explained in detail in http://jkriege2.github.io/JKQtPlotter/page_buildinstructions.html.

With CMake you can easily build JKQTPlotter and all its examples, by calling something like:

    $ mkdir build; cd build
    $ cmake .. -G "<cmake_generator>" "-DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=<path_to_your_qt_sources>" "-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<where_to_install>"
    $ cmake --build . --config "Debug"
    $ cmake --install . --config "Debug"

This will create CMake targets, which you can easily link against. For the main plotter library, the target's name is \c JKQTPlotter5::JKQTPlotter5 or \c JKQTPlotter6::JKQTPlotter6 depending on the Qt-Version you use. You can then simmply link against this via:

  find_package(JKQTPlotter6 REQUIRED)
  target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} JKQTPlotter6::JKQTPlotter6)

or on a Qt-version agnostic way via:

  find_package(JKQTPlotter${QT_VERSION_MAJOR} REQUIRED)
  target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} JKQTPlotter${QT_VERSION_MAJOR}::JKQTPlotter${QT_VERSION_MAJOR})

See https://jkriege2.github.io/JKQtPlotter/page_buildinstructions__c_m_a_k_e.html for details.

Usage via CMake's FetchConten-API

In addition to the method described above (i.e. build and install the library and then use it), you can also use JKQTPlotter via CMake's FetchContent-API.

For this method, you need to add these lines to your CMake project:

include(FetchContent) # once in the project to include the module
# ... now declare JKQTPlotter5/6
FetchContent_Declare(JKQTPlotter${QT_VERSION_MAJOR}
                     GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/jkriege2/JKQtPlotter.git
                     # GIT_TAG        v5.0.0)
# ... finally make JKQTPlotter5/6 available
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(JKQTPlotter${QT_VERSION_MAJOR})

These declare JKQTPlotter and make it available in your project. Afterwards you should be able to link against it, using

target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} JKQTPlotter${QT_VERSION_MAJOR}::JKQTPlotter${QT_VERSION_MAJOR})

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