Professor Norman Matloff
Department of Computer Science
University of California at Davis

(Please mail any questions to Norm Matloff.)

The jgraph mathematical graphing package is designed as a front end to LaTeX. It reads in command language from a text file, and outputs Encapsulated Postscript to the standard output, which can be converted to other file types. The package is quite primitive but extremely easy to learn and use.

Note, however, that I personally no longer use jgraph. Instead, I use the R statistical package, which includes very nice graphics (not limited to statistical settings). See my R tutorial.

Jgraph is available from the jgraph home page and on many Web archives. It is free, public domain software.

Jgraph is distributed from its home page as a .shar.Z file. Use the Unix uncompress command and then the unshar command. If your system does not have the latter, get it from the sharutils package at the GNU Web site, or do a Web search on "jgraph" to get a .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 version, or an RPM file.

Jgraph should compile easily on almost any UNIX system. For Linux, add a line

#include <stdlib.h>

Here is some documentation:

• Jgraph's official documentation, both the man page and the HTML lecture notes. The latter contains more information and is more readable.

• My own brief introduction.

• The many .jgr files in the jgraph source code package serve as examples as well.

Other software Web sites by Norm Matloff:

• Professor Matloff's Unix/C tutorials.

• Dr. Matloff's introduction to the mutt e-mail utility. Don't use pine! It was designed for people who are afraid of computers, not for computer experts.

• His introduction to the elvis text editor. It is much better than ordinary vi (and far, FAR better than pico). X11 mouse capability; subwindows (even on nongraphics terminals); infinite undo; paragraph formatting and so on.

• Norman Matloff's guide to fast debugging!

• Dr. Matloff's beginner's guide to installing and using Linux.

• His general guide to editing program source code.

• Norm Matloff's Chinese-language software page.
• Professor Matloff's LaTeX Web page.