[Math] software for drawing really nice textbook-quality graphs

Question

Wolfram Alpha is great for graphing functions, and I feel bad criticizing it. However, let's face it, the diagrams and figures in our textbooks are much nicer. Consider the following figures of $y=-(x-2)^2+4$ over $0<x<4$:

Obviously, the first figure is much better. The second figure (generated by wolframalpha.com) doesn't even indicate that (0,0) and (4,0) are excluded from the graph. But besides that, the left drawing simply looks much nicer and more professional. Not surprisingly, it comes from a textbook.

So, my question is, are there any software tools available for making really nice textbook-quality graphs?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

PSTricks in LaTeX can create nice graphics. Here is an example and the PSTricks which created it.

 \begin{figure}
 \centering
  \scalebox{1.5}{
  \begin{pspicture*}(-0.75,-1.5)(3.5,1.5)
	\psaxes{<->}(0,0)(-0.75,-1.5)(3.5,1.5)
	\psplot[linecolor=red,plotpoints=500]{0.01}{3.5}{x x 1 x sub mul exp}
  \end{pspicture*}
  }
 \caption{Graph of $y=x^{x(1-x)}$}
\end{figure}