I have had the same problem. If you want classy
graphics you have several options and none of
them are simple.
There are several freeware/shareware programs
that can read files created by Cell Quest.
FCS Assistant ($25 shareware for the Macintosh) can
read these files and convert them to ASCII.
You can then plot the data in the graphing program of
choice. I am not sure whether FCS assistant allows
you to save gated files. I havent used it much.
If you have a Windows machine, get WinMDI which
lets you save histograms in ASCII. It also can save
gated histograms and dot plots.
Both FCS Assistant and WinMDI can be accessed from
the U Mass flow cytometry software page.
http://www.bio.umass.edu/mcbfacs/flowcat.html
Another approach is to scan the plots
of interest and then use DataThief (Available from the
NIH Image site, I dont know the URL) to "steal" the
x-y coordinates. This is really useful if you dont
have acess to the original files and are stuck with
a lousy print out. Data Thief creates a text file that
can be read in any graphing program. This does not
work for dot plots.
Hope that helps
Regards
Murali Ramanathan