Support in MATLAB
Waterloo provides three APIs to create plots in MATLAB.
- The MATLAB API - provides commands that mimic the standard MATLAB graphics calls for creating plots. This API also uses MATLAB figures to house the graphs and therefore allows Waterloo and MATLAB graphics to be mixed.
- A Groovy API - creates an easy-to-use interface between MATLAB and the Java API for creating plots. It is 'Groovy' because it uses the Groovy programming language .
- The Java API - which provides full access to all Waterloo features.
Note that the MATLAB-like and Groovy APIs can be used only for creating charts. To edit the charts programmatically you need to use the Java API.
The web section for each API explains its pros and cons. Briefly, these can be summarised as:
| API | Pros | Cons |
| MATLAB | Familiarity | May not be compatible with future versions of MATLAB |
| Ease of use | ||
| Groovy | Ease of use | Requires Groovy language support |
| Accepts MATLAB-style property name/value arguments | ||
| Java | Versatile | More boilerplate code |
| Fast |