Cython vs. PyQtGraph vs. VBScript vs. h5py Comparison Chart

PyQtGraph is a pure-python graphics and GUI library built on PyQt/PySide and NumPy. It is intended for use in mathematics/scientific/engineering applications. Despite being written entirely in python, the library is very fast due to its heavy leverage of NumPy for number crunching and Qt's GraphicsView framework for fast display. PyQtGraph is distributed under the MIT open-source license. Basic 2D plotting in interactive view boxes. Line and scatter plots. Data can be panned/scaled by mouse. Fast drawing for real-time data display and interaction. Displays most data types (int or float; any bit depth; RGB, RGBA, or luminance). Functions for slicing multidimensional images at arbitrary angles (great for MRI data). Rapid update for video display or real-time interaction. Image display with interactive lookup tables and level control. Mesh rendering with isosurface generation. Interactive viewports rotate/zoom with mouse. Basic 3D scenegraph for easier programming.

The h5py package is a Pythonic interface to the HDF5 binary data format. It lets you store huge amounts of numerical data, and easily manipulate that data from NumPy. For example, you can slice into multi-terabyte datasets stored on disk, as if they were real NumPy arrays. Thousands of datasets can be stored in a single file, categorized and tagged however you want. H5py uses straightforward NumPy and Python metaphors, like dictionary and NumPy array syntax. For example, you can iterate over datasets in a file, or check out the .shape or .dtype attributes of datasets. You don't need to know anything special about HDF5 to get started. In addition to the easy-to-use high level interface, h5py rests on a object-oriented Cython wrapping of the HDF5 C API. Almost anything you can do from C in HDF5, you can do from h5py.