plplot

i just tried out plplot, in my eternal saga to find a good publication-quality 3d plotting package for python. looks pretty good and the interface isn't too bad. it looks like it will only spit out hardcopies; i can't find an interactive mode. fine for publication, a little inconvenient for debugging/prototyping. also, the only really standard vector formats are b+w and color postscript. but i could ps2pdf with no problems and tremendously improved compression. i tried the /usr/share/plplot/examples/python/xw08.py example from the admittedly old 5.5.2 for a surface contour. i did need to put in plinit() after the import plplot line for it to work. i also used plscolbg(255,255,255) to make a white background, with decent results.