Automated Data Plots with Grace

I use the Grace WYSIWYG data plotting program to generate graphs of various measurements I make. Grace can work in interactive mode and has a batch mode as well. I've come up with a system that uses a perl script to automatically update plots so that my web pages can show up-to-the-minute data.

The idea is to use the WYSIWYG version of Grace to create a file describing the graph. With a bit of manual editing, that file is turned into a ".cmd" file that Grace can read in its batch mode. If needed, some simple variable substitutions can be done via a perl script to customize the graph title, axis labels, etc. Finally, one of two approaches is used to update the data displayed in the plot.