Mission Statement
SciDAVis is a free interactive application aimed at data analysis and publication-quality plotting. It combines a shallow learning curve and an intuitive, easy-to-use graphical user interface with powerful features such as scriptability and extensibility. SciDAVis runs on GNU/Linux, Windows and MacOS X; possibly also on other platforms like *BSD, although this is untested.
SciDAVis is similar in its field of application to proprietary Windows applications like Origin and SigmaPlot as well as free applications like QtiPlot, Labplot and Gnuplot.
What sets SciDAVis apart from the above is its emphasis on providing a friendly and open environment (in the software as well as the project) for new and experienced users alike. Particularly, this means that we will try to provide good documentation on all levels, ranging from user’s manual over tutorials down to and including documentation of the internal APIs We encourage users to share their experiences on our forums and on our mailing lists.
History
SciDAVis has been started as a fork off of QtiPlot with the aim of introducing some changes in design and establishing an open and friendly community. The versions labelled SciDAVis 0.1.0 to 0.1.4 are still very close to QtiPlot 0.9.×. But many new features and a revision of existing ones have been introduced in release 0.2.0. This is especially true for tables and matrices which have internally been rewritten almost completely. SciDAVis will deviate more and more from QtiPlot in the future with our move towards a modular design and a less Origin-like interface (see roadmap for details). Beta releases of the upcoming SciDAVis versions are available here.
At some time in 2008, the developer teams of LabPlot and SciDAVis found their project goals to be very similar (and since LabPlot 2.x is based on the same library as SciDAVis, i.e., Qt4.x) decided to start a close cooperation. The current plans are to use a common backend with two frontends, one with full KDE4 integration (called LabPlot 2.x) and one with no KDE depenencies (pure Qt so to say) for easier cross-platform use (called SciDAVis). This promises a faster development speed for both projects while focussing on slightly different audiences. From the user’s point of view, there will still be two different applications.