Matlab has powerful data plotting ability, but one annoying problem prevents it from being perfect: when you increase the linewidth, the dotted line size stays the same, so the plotted line no longer looks like a dotted line.

Another problem is Matlab's bugs: it often cuts away some curves and captions. And, of course, Matlab is expensive. On the other hand, the free Gnuplot doesn't produce very satisfactory visual effects either.

The author got accustomed to Matlab's easy interface, and wanted to integerate the powerful graphic functions of MetaPost with the interface of Matlab. The outcome was matlab.mp. It is based on graph.mp (part of the MetaPost distribution). The package collects data into 2D arrays, and remembers the line styles, so it's easy to plot out legends. The package features:

– All kinds of line colour, width, style (dotted/dashed, etc), and markers (the code may easily be expanded);
– Easy interface, very similar to Matlab;
– The full power of latex is available in captions and legends, by using the latexmp package.

See also metapost latexmp.

The author is Yang Yang.