Post #966631

2026-04-06 15:37 UTC

#fediquestion #boost :bst: Data visualisation help much appreciated :neocat_reach: I'm sick of presenting shitty Excel data visualisations as much as I love what eg. D3.js can do. There's some fancy stuff out there but they all require coding to some extent to run or be embedded … all of which proved being beyond me. I need a solution that can interpret simple structured .csv (or .txt or smth similar simple), and outputs vector/bitmap files. My aim is to create 2D data visualisations (donut chart for data set A, vertical bar chart for data set B). Both data sets are simple tables: A NAME (txt) | VALUE (int.) B NAME (txt) | VALUE (int.) or VALUE (hh:mm:ss) Names are people's names and may run a bit long. Yes, I do run some CLI stuff regularly but I can't code. No, I don't want to use AI. No, I don't want to register for a paid subscription to a capitalist platform. Help and boosts appreciated! #dataviz #datavis #datavisualization #datavisualisation

Replies (4)

@solonovamax@tech.lgbt 2026-04-06 15:38

@BabyFn0rd@tech.lgbt I think what you want is graphviz usually used on the cli, but there are some gui tools for it as well

Open ##2463658
@ShadowJonathan@tech.lgbt 2026-04-06 15:41

@BabyFn0rd@tech.lgbt python + pandas + plotly is what i can recommend, but that requires a bit of coding knowledge, plus data processing knowledge... i could recommend something like this though; https://www.coursera.org/projects/data-visualization-using-plotly with some documentation here: https://plotly.com/python/plotly-fundamentals/

Open ##2463664
@multioculate@mastodon.social 2026-04-06 16:04

@BabyFn0rd@tech.lgbt it's right on the edge between "CLI stuff" and "programming" but have you looked into gnuplot? It's great for non-interactive visualizations akin to what Excel charts can do (and more) and it's very well suited for incorporation into a workflow or pipeline that takes CSVs/TXTs/other flat-files to PNGs or SVGs

Open ##2463665
@arti@mk.absturztau.be 2026-04-06 16:28

@BabyFn0rd@tech.lgbt octave is the open source alternative to matlab and can read csv and plot data in many ways. https://octave.org/

Open ##2463666