mingplot: a tool to generate a flash-based chart

Last Modified: 2008-05-06 (Since: 2003-05-21)


What's mingplot ?

mingplot is a tool to generate a flash-based chart using ming. mingplot includes googleplot a tool to plot a chart of Google's results count and amazonplot a tool to plot a chart of Amazon's sales rank and sales price.

mingplot uses efont-serif for generating a Flash file.

What's New

Requirements

Usage of googleplot

To investigate a results count of a keyword `foo' and generate a chart in `/home/yourname/survey' directory, run the following command:

% googleplot -o /home/yourname/survey foo

You can use query expressions in the same way as usual google searches. The following example shows how to specify a keyword consists of two or more words.

% googleplot -o /home/yourname/survey '"ruby programming"'

To specify two or more keywords, run the mingplot like:

% googleplot -o /home/yourname/survey foo bar baz

Or specify a line-oriented text file containing keywords using -f option:

% cat keywords.txt
foo
bar
baz

% googleplot -o /home/yourname/survey -f keywords.txt

Updating Charts

To update charts, specify a directory containing the exisintg charts to be updated and run mingplot in the same way described above.

You can run mingplot as a daemon using -d option. In the daemon mode, mingplot resides in the memory and updates charts once a day automatically. Note that in the daemon mode, a keyword file specified by -f option is reloaded just before the update of charts.

% googleplot -d -o /home/yourname/survey foo

Or you can use Unix's cron system to update a chart. For example, the following setting allows you to update your chart every 5 a.m.

    00 05 * * * googleplot -q -o /home/yourname/survey foo

Other Options

Try mingplot --help.

Usage of amazonplot

To use amazonplot, you need the token of Amazon Web Services.

To investigate a sales rank of a US book with the ASIN (in books, ISBN) 12345678 and generate a chart in `/home/yourname/survey' directory, run the following command:

% amazonplot --locale=us --token=AccessKeyID -o /home/yourname/survey 12345678

There are other categories such as classical, dvd, vhs, electronics, software, videogames, etc.

The other usage is same as googleplot.

Download

This is a free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2.


Satoru Takabayashi