Softwares

Figures, Plotting, Graph
• Origin, Windows, GUI
• Inkscape
• Matlab
• Paraview
• Gnuplot, unix OS, TUI
• Mathematica
• xfig 
• LibreOffice Draw




(1) Origin
Pro: professional level, full-ledged, with statistics function
Con: not free, not sure if there is free evaluation version


(2) Origin-like software, QtiPlot derived
QtiPlot is not free; Labplot is Linux only!
SciDavis  is cross-platform, a fork from QtiPlot, python scriptable
Pro: SciDavis  is free under GPLv2, without any restriction
Con: SciDavis and  Labplot stop at the early development stage; less functions than origin.


(3) script byMatlab, pyLab(matplotlib), gnuplot
Pro: good for bath processing, tight integration with data generation codes in matlab or python
Con: need programming experience


(4) Office Excel or LibreOffice
Pro:  widely available, good for report generation,
Con: Mouse drag edit is not supported, not for high quality plot


(5) Paraview or other FEA and CFD post-processing visualization
Pro:  very impressived 2D drawing in 3D view
Con: complicated, only domain user will use such software


From <http://www.iesensor.com/blog/2012/11/14/363/>
 
Graph Visualization
Graphviz, free, multi-system
visio, GUI,
processon,online tool




File converter
  Pandoc


Presentation
Beamer (a LaTeX document class for creating slides for presentations)


Editor
Vim
Emacs


Typesetter
LaTex
Latex vs InDesign
• LATEX is not a program, InDesign is one
• They are meant for completely different tasks
InDesign is a program that helps you in layout: one can make newspapers, journals, magazines, books and so on. It produces a text which looks very nicely and compact. Moreover, InDesign provides its user with almost insurmountable ability to make their book/magazine/newspaper/… look prettier: one can add additional layers with images or with small pictures which will serve as a background and so on.


LATEX
on the other hand is meant for processing a text with complex structure and hence incorporating different text-like objects (like math formulas) and figure-like objects. It lacks, however, the ability to make texts look fancy and pretty (they instead look really awesome), although one can (if one really wants) embed a picture almost like one works with InDesign. This is mostly because LATEX is used for editing scientific or near-scientific texts.


From <https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-LaTeX-and-InDesign>




LATEX vs FrameMaker
http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~kjt/research/pdf/latex-frame.pdf


References:
http://dirtdirectory.org/




Latex vs MS word
LaTeX is better at:
• Dealing with mathematical notation.
• Consistent handling of intra-document references and bibliography.
• Separation of content and style. In principle this means that you can write your document without caring how it is formatted, and at the end of the day wrap it in the style-file provided by the journal publisher before submission to conform to the house style. In practice some of the journal publishers demand special formatting commands that partially moots this process. Furthermore recent versions of Word and LibreOffice Writer, when properly used, should be able to keep track of various levels of section heading separate from the body text, and apply uniform styling to each level. The gap is somewhat closing.
• Tables and illustrations. With PSTricks or TikZ, one can produce high quality illustrations within the document (though the learning curve is a bit steep there). And I've found LaTeX to be better at preparing complex tables.
WYSIWYG (especially Word and Writer) is better at:
• Collaborative editing. Without using an online site for collaborative LaTeX editing (such as ShareLaTeX), working collaboratively on a LaTeX file ideally requires some sort of separate revision control software. Word and Writer have very good comments/annotations and edit-tracking features. When a large number of authors are commenting on the writing of one file, this can be very useful.
• Spell check. Admittedly most text editors one uses to edit TeX files also do spell check. But this is generally conveniently built into WYSIWYG editors.
• Compatibility. Unless you work in mathematics, computer science, or physics (and sometimes even if you work in those fields), it is more likely that your collaborators will know what to do with a Word or Writer file than a LaTeX file.
• Minimum barrier to entry. If you just care about getting the ideas down on paper, you can use a WYSIWYG editor just like a typewriter. Sure, it may be tedious to fix the formatting later on, compared to LaTeX where one need to first figure out how to setup a bare-minimum file before using, it may be an attractive point.
A wash:
• Most journals provide templates for both Word and LaTeX, so there's no real winner there.


Suggestion: if you want to convince someone to start using LaTeX, start them out first in one of the WYSIWYG environments designed for LaTeX first (for example LyX). This will help somewhat to ameliorate the scary entry barrier.


From <https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5414/what-are-the-advantages-or-disadvantages-of-using-latex-for-writing-scientific-p>


personal wiki software for Windows
cloud-based knowledge management software

 From <https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-personal-wiki-software-for-Windows>

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_vector_graphics_editors>