This article discusses on how data plotting can be improved. There are various programs out there, each has it's own pros and cons:

• gtkwave: a great viewer for digital simulation data
• gwave: analog waveform viewer
• KJWaves: simulation frontend with plotting window
• buildin plotting functions in ngspice
• gnuplot / octave / scipy / … or similar programs as postprocessing script languages
• …

There have been various suggestions on the mailing lists about the feature a plotting program could have:

• postprocessing: integrate, add, diff, fft, …
• view, examine: cursors, multiple windows, …
• data import, file format: circuit simulation data (gnucap, spice, …) hdf5 , measured data from oscilloscopes, spectrum analysers, …
• data export, file format: hdf5, pictures (png, ps, …), ascii
• communication backends: dbus, …
• extension/scripting language

• write some import functions for analog data

gwave requires an old guile-gtk for GTK1.2.

• port gwave to guile-gtk2.0 for GTK2.x
• remove the guile-gtk requirement. Maybe create a native gtk2 application with libglade?

A rewrite of gwave:

• gaw: http://www.rvq.fr/linux/gaw.php

Are there any programs out there that can show and postprocess simulation data? If yes, how can they be extended to work as a waveform viewer for the simulators (gnucap, ngspice)?

Some vague notes on how a new plotting application could be written. This notes currently relate on python as programming language.

• the GUI could be created with libglade
• the data storage format could be hdf5 , maybe together with pytables
• the plotting engine could be matplotlib (png, ps export included)
• postprocessing could be done with scipy
• the scripting language is python. Thus import filter to hdf5 can easily be written. Even an integrated python shell would be possible. Seen on MayaVi 2

Disadvantage: This configuration has a huge rucksack of additional required packages.

Update

There are now some programs out there, that use the python, numpy, matplotlib tool chain:

• oscopy: http://repo.or.cz/w/oscopy.git
• dataplot: http://www.h-renrew.de/h/dataplot/dataplot.html, http://repo.or.cz/w/dataplot.git
• gsim: http://kiwiki.fmtnuni.sk/mediawiki/index.php/Description_of_gsim