[coldtea]

>For even the simplest possible plot, I have to create a subplot and axis.

So? Can't that be abstracted away once in a custom lib, of the 3-4 plots you use 99% of the time, and be done with it?

In which case, you just need to pass in your data and labels, in a specific format, and that's it.

[enriquto]

> So? Can't that be abstracted away once in a custom lib, of the 3-4 plots you use 99% of the time, and be done with it?

This does not beat gnuplot's simplicity where you don't even need to define that.

The following line is a complete gnuplot program to plot the sine function:

    plot sin(x)

Every parameter of the plot has reasonable defaults, and you can redefine all of them as you wish.

[chaps]

"that can be abstracted away in a custom lib"

Yeah, and that's really not helpful for sharing code or doing exploratory charting. It's never, ever as simple as just "being done with it".

vega-lite-api is my charting library of choice these days. Much simpler than gnuplot, d3, matplotlib, etc.