Especially when you have such pretty defaults in things like Matlab and Mathematica.
Matplotlib (http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/) is actually the best opensource library for creating great looking graphs that I have come across, and is comparable to Matlab and Mathematica.
I guess taste comes in place - I find producing good (as in academic publication good) figures in matlab an exercice of pain. The subplot mechanism is awful (at least was 5 years ago), and it is hard to control the layout. I heard mathematic is much better in that regard, but never used it myself.
Comments
> R has some basic visualization libraries
If you include CRAN packages, then this couldn't be further from the truth: http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/
R can be made to produce beautiful visualizations.
Edit: here's a link to the top-voted thumbnails of R visualization: http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php?sort=votes
IMO, since it can be scripted from the command line, it's high time Gnuplot died a graceful death.
I have used R/ggplot for a long time now, and it's exceedingly difficult to produce beautiful visualizations.
The only thing that makes tufte-quality visualizations in my experience is hand-building your graphs in tikz.
The graphs you linked to are hideous from an aesthetics point of view; font's are ugly, data:ink ratio far too low, color choices poor etc.
Especially when you have such pretty defaults in things like Matlab and Mathematica.
Matplotlib (http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/) is actually the best opensource library for creating great looking graphs that I have come across, and is comparable to Matlab and Mathematica.
I've looked at matplotlib but still think it's ugly by default.
Compare to:
http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/weather-stations-data/
http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/rna-codons-table/
The beauty of tex font's + vector graphics is impressive. Try zooming in on the sparklines in the first example
I guess taste comes in place - I find producing good (as in academic publication good) figures in matlab an exercice of pain. The subplot mechanism is awful (at least was 5 years ago), and it is hard to control the layout. I heard mathematic is much better in that regard, but never used it myself.