icplot

This is a library used at The Irish Centre for High End Computing (ICHEC) for generating plots, diagrams and other graphics for technical documents.

Features

The project has three primary modules:

converter: Converts between image formats, such as pdf, svg and png renderer: Render text based inputs as svg, pdf or png images or videos theme: Generate and apply themes from a design system

Converter

To covert between image formats you can do:

icplot convert --source my_image.svg --target my_image.png

Supported conversions are:

• svg -> png
• svg -> pdf
• pdf -> png

Renderer

Render a range of text based formats to images or videos. For example,

icplot render --file uml_diagram.puml

renders the PlantUML file to png and svg.

Supported render inputs and targets are:

• PlantUml
  • SVG
  • PNG
• Latex/Tikz
  • PDF
  • SVG
  • PNG
• Mermaid
  • SVG
  • PNG
• Custom JSON
  • Graph
    • Backends:
      • Matplotlib
      • VTK
    • Output formats:
      • SVG
      • PNG
      • MP4
  • Tree
    • Backends:
      • Graphviz
    • Output formats:
      • SVG
      • PNG
  • Gantt
    • Backends:
      • Cairo
      • PgfGantt
    • Output formats:
      • SVG
      • PNG
  • Scene
    • Backends:
      • Cairo
      • VTK
    • Output formats:
      • SVG
      • VTK

Themes

The library supports themeing with an Angular Material 3 motivated design system. Plots can be themed by adapting a version of theme.json included in this module's source. Currently Tikz and PlantUML support themeing.

Installation

The package is available on PyPI. The core install is deliberately light — it does not pull the heavy rendering backends, so consumers that only need part of the library (e.g. a docs build that just converts svg to png) stay small:

pip install icplot

Backends are opt-in via extras:

For example, pip install icplot[cairo] for svg conversion, or pip install icplot[all] for the full toolkit. The native cairo and imagemagick system libraries are also required for those backends; on Mac:

brew install imagemagick cairo

Copyright

Copyright 2024 Irish Centre for High End Computing

The software in this repository can be used under the conditions of the GPLv3+ license, which is available for reading in the accompanying LICENSE file.