I have a project where I need to display data graphically on a web page. The host computer will be running Linux Enterprise Server and the Apache web-server. The data is statistical (trending) data, which is best presented in an x-y scatter plot (the abscissa elements are separated by a non-fixed value – i.e., the data is not uniformly sampled). The amount of data per plot is less than 5000 x-y pairs.

Some background: I have taken Well House Consultant’s Python course, and have just started coding this project in Python. I have started reading up on Scalar Vector Graphics (SVG; which is XML-based). I expect to be using XML, XSLT and XHTTP for other elements of the project.

Given that I want to keep the number of languages to a minimum, and Python is the primary language, is SVG a good choice? Or are there other alternatives that I should look into (such as PHP)?



Have a look at Python Image Library and Matplotlib in Python ... I suspect it does what you want and it will also save you the time and money involved in learning PHP on top of Python.

Here's a link to some of the Matplotlib and Python Image Library stuff.
http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/backends.html
http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/

As regard generated file format ... .gif or .jpg or .svg are all possible; if you're looking for the widest possible web availability, I might prefer .gif or .jpg as they're pretty well universal, even though your server will have to generate the pixel maps.

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