# Is it possible to manipulate GR plots with keyboard and/or mouse?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-it-possible-to-manipulate-gr-plots-with-keyboard-and-or-mouse/34592>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** plotting\
**Created:** [February 13, 2020, 5:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-it-possible-to-manipulate-gr-plots-with-keyboard-and-or-mouse/34592 "2020-02-13T17:45:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![PetrKryslUCSD](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/petrkryslucsd/32/215825_2.png) [@PetrKryslUCSD](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/PetrKryslUCSD)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2020, 5:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-it-possible-to-manipulate-gr-plots-with-keyboard-and-or-mouse/34592/1 "2020-02-13T17:45:57Z")

</div>

Zoom in/out, pan, rotate, … The usual stuff.  
I could not even find how to grab input from GR. Is that possible?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jlchan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jlchan/32/10958_2.png) [@jlchan](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jlchan)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2020, 6:59pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-it-possible-to-manipulate-gr-plots-with-keyboard-and-or-mouse/34592/2 "2020-02-13T18:59:52Z")

</div>

My understanding is that GR isn’t the best backend for interactivity. You might need one of the [slower but fancier backends](http://docs.juliaplots.org/latest/backends/), like Plotly.js (which does provide some of the interactivity you’re describing).

A nice [online example](https://plot.ly/julia/3d-scatter-plots/) of what to expect with Plotly.js (see bottom of page for example)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![PetrKryslUCSD](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/petrkryslucsd/32/215825_2.png) [@PetrKryslUCSD](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/PetrKryslUCSD)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2020, 7:21pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-it-possible-to-manipulate-gr-plots-with-keyboard-and-or-mouse/34592/3 "2020-02-13T19:21:20Z")

</div>

Thanks, that’s good to know.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jheinen](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jheinen/32/2787_2.png) [@jheinen](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jheinen)\
**Post date:** [February 13, 2020, 8:12pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-it-possible-to-manipulate-gr-plots-with-keyboard-and-or-mouse/34592/4 "2020-02-13T20:12:49Z")

</div>

One idea behind GR is to integrate it into GUI toolkits, like Qt5. There are several examples both for Julia (QML) and Python in the corresponding example directories.