Generating Mathematical Images?

[Zurtex]

Hey, I was wondering what's the best way to generate mathematical images?

I was really hoping of creating a few really high resolution ones and popping down to the print shop to have them printed out. But I have a couple of problems:

1) How do I go about generating a mathematical image such as "The Devil's Stair Case" or some Fractal or some 2 dimensional surface in 3D space (well a representation of)? I need some tool where I can have the picture calculated in some arbitrary large resolution, preferably with such options as sub-pixel rendering or if it makes it look better Anti-Aliasing.

2) I'm not completely sure what DPI means I can print out at, I have 2 options of high resolution printing, 2400 DPI or 5200 DPI, does anyone know what this would mean in terms of something like "2560 x 1600 on an A4 piece of paper"?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[matt grime]

some solutions depending on the situation:

maple, mathematica, latex has drawing capabilities, surf, xfig.

I imagine the first two are good for the problem of the Devil's Staircase. Surf is for drawing surfaces and other aspects of real algebraic geometry, and very fancy it is too.

here is a defunct page (the CSS is wrong which is why it lookts terrible), but the picture there is done with surf and some experiment with fibonacci numbers as exponents.

http://www.maths.bris.ac.uk/~maxmg/maths/introductory/algebraicart.html

 

[Zurtex]

Thanks .

Would you mind providing a link to surf? I can't seem to find it very easily

Also if you could link to some guides, that would be great. I'm having hard time finding anything that constructive to people who don't have a good working knowledge in the first place.

 

[matt grime]

Google for 'surf algebraic geometry'. (the description I gave of it...). It is the first hit: surf.sourceforge.net

source forge has whole sections devoted to mathematics software; there may be solutions to your initial problem of the devil's staircase.

 

[Zurtex]

Thank you, sorry I tried searching similar phrases but didn't get very far.