Text plots (plotting without figure in command line)

Is there a way (or a package) to plot figures in the Matlab command line without using the figures? For example, upon startup using

matlab -nojvm -nodesktop -nodisplay -nosplash

By a text plot, I mean something along the lines of ASCII art (using 'x's and 'o's for markers).

This is useful if one wants to run programs remotely and generate figures, but without using forwarding like "ssh -Y".

Answer 1

[Doug Hull]

This feature was deprecated. It was available on 01/10/84 according to this old version of MATLAB I have on my machine.

Notice how extensive our language was at the time. :)

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

I don't know if it is impossible, but I do not know how to do it.

I have implemented that sort of thing a few times, but it was in the context of packages that deliberately exposed their plot driver routines so that users could supply custom device drivers for unsupported devices (or to for enhanced functionality.)

The avenue that is sort-of supported is to use print to create the graphic, perhaps as a .png file, and then to have something that converts the png file to the format you can use. The options are a bit limited with -nodisplay but there are options: see here

[Walter Roberson]

You might be able to hack something by interfacing a driver according to the control logic used by graphics/private/render.m

Having scanned a little through there, I'm wondering if perhaps one might have an easier time by adapting Oliver's export_fig ?

Answer 3

[Patrick Kalita]

MATLAB doesn't do this out of the box (anymore!), and I'm not aware of any 3rd party products that do it.

If you want to write it yourself, you might start by learning about rasterization algorithms.