ECplot: an online tool for making standardized plots from large datasets for bioinformatics publications.
RESULTS
We have implemented ECplot, an online tool for plotting charts from large datasets. This tool supports a variety of chart types commonly used in bioinformatics publications. In our benchmarking, it was able to create a Box-and-Whisker plot with about 67 000 data points and 8 MB total file size within several seconds. The design of the tool makes common formatting operations easy to perform. It also allows more complex operations to be achieved by advanced XML (Extensible Markup Language) and programming options. Data and formatting styles are stored in separate files, such that style templates can be made and applied to new datasets. The text-based file formats based on XML facilitate efficient manipulation of formatting styles for a large number of data series. These file formats also provide a means to reproduce published figures from raw data, which complement parallel efforts in making the data and software involved in published analysis results accessible. We demonstrate this idea by using ECplot to replicate some complex figures from a previous publication.


METHODS
ECplot and its source code (under MIT license) are available at https://yiplab.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/ecplot/.


BACKGROUND
kevinyip@cse.cuhk.edu.hk.
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong.
Alex Chun-Hong
AC
Fok
Sunny Siu-Nam
SS
Mok
Sau Dan
SD
Lee
Kevin Y
KY
Yip
D019295:Computational Biology; D016208:Databases, Factual; D020407:Internet; D011381:Programming Languages; D011642:Publications; D012984:Software