software for drawing really nice textbook-quality graphs?

Question

Wolfram Alpha is great for graphing functions, and I feel bad criticizing it. However, let's face it, the diagrams and figures in our textbooks are much nicer. Consider the following figures of $y=-(x-2)^2+4$ over $0<x<4$:

Obviously, the first figure is much better. The second figure (generated by wolframalpha.com) doesn't even indicate that (0,0) and (4,0) are excluded from the graph. But besides that, the left drawing simply looks much nicer and more professional. Not surprisingly, it comes from a textbook.

So, my question is, are there any software tools available for making really nice textbook-quality graphs?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

MATLAB is fairly robust and tweak-able but I'm honestly not a fan. Python's pyPlot has a MATLAB-like interface and is very extensible. Asymptote is a vector graphics language designed for PostScript and $\LaTeX$ and is capable of drawing complex figures. PGFPlots is a similar package designed specifically for plotting, based on PGF/TikZ. You can also take a deeper look at Mathematica's plotting options, they allow for virtually infinite customization depending on your proficiency in Mathematica.

Answer 2

PSTricks in LaTeX can create nice graphics. Here is an example and the PSTricks which created it.

 \begin{figure}
 \centering
  \scalebox{1.5}{
  \begin{pspicture*}(-0.75,-1.5)(3.5,1.5)
 \psaxes{<->}(0,0)(-0.75,-1.5)(3.5,1.5)
 \psplot[linecolor=red,plotpoints=500]{0.01}{3.5}{x x 1 x sub mul exp}
  \end{pspicture*}
  }
 \caption{Graph of $y=x^{x(1-x)}$}
\end{figure}