In computing, Gist is a scientific graphics library written in C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

 by David H. Munro

David H. Munro

David Herbert Munro is a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who created the programming language Yorick as well as the scientific graphics library Gist. Munro earned his B.S. at Caltech and Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

 of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...

. It supports three graphics output devices: X Window, PostScript

PostScript

PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...

, and Computer Graphics Metafile

Computer Graphics Metafile

Computer Graphics Metafile is a free and open international standard file format for 2D vector graphics, raster graphics, and text, and is defined by ISO/IEC 8632.-Overview:...

s (CGM). The library is promoted as being small (writing directly to Xlib), efficient, and full-featured. Portability is restricted to systems running X Window (essentially the Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 world).

There is a Python

Python (programming language)

Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...

 port called PyGist; it is used as one of several optional graphics front-ends of the scientific library SciPy

SciPy

SciPy is an open source library of algorithms and mathematical tools for the Python programming language.SciPy contains modules for optimization, linear algebra, integration, interpolation, special functions, FFT, signal and image processing, ODE solvers and other tasks common in science and...

. PyGist is also ported to Mac

Mac OS

Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...

 and MS Windows.