In the past, many users requested more interactivity for GR console applications. Embedding GR in Qt/QML applications or in browser environments (via JavaScript) seemed too complex for most users. With the current version we have improved this. For this reason, a new library was developed that was designed from the beginning to provide the basic functionality for interactive graphics applications. What was previously reserved for GUI or web applications can now be used in console applications without changing any script.

If you are in the fortunate position to be able to use iTerm2 under macOS and if you are looking for a simple solution to visualize data on a remote system, e.g. an HPC system, then this blog post might be helpful. It is often not intended (or desired) to use interactive plotting software on HPC systems, which are actually designed for computing. With a private Julia installation, however, you can remedy the situation without much installation effort.

If you are looking for a scientific visualization package, this blog post might help to make the decision easier. To provide a basis for decision-making and start a comparison, I wrote a relatively simple application in the Julia programming language. A data set - here COVID-19 data from John Hopkins University - is to be downloaded from the Internet, analyzed, and graphically displayed. The call is simple: jupyter notebook covid19.ipynb In this case, Jupyter was used as the graphical user interface.

The visualization shown here is based on simulation data generated as part of the work “Modeling a spheroidal microswimmer and cooperative swimming in a narrow slit” (DOI). More information about the implementation of the simulation program can be found here. In this article, I restrict myself exclusively to the visualization of the squirmers. Originally, the data from the individual time steps was read in using a complex visualization system. Generating a video sequence from this data was associated with a certain operating effort.

The GR.jl module provides a Julia interface to GR, a framework for visualisation applications. Installation From the Julia REPL an up to date version can be installed with: Pkg.add("GR") or in the Pkg REPL-mode: ] add GR The Julia package manager will download and install a pre-compiled run-time (for your hardware architecture), if the GR software is not already installed in the recommended locations. With this installation method, no additional Julia packages are needed.