spl@szechuan.ucsd.edu (Steve Lamont) writes:
> > > I haven't seen any good, freely available, postscript plotting
> > > software around. Anyone on the list have any pointers?
> >
> > Install the demo version of IDL (Interactive Data Language) from
> > Research Systems, Inc (/cgi-bin/exit-to?http://www.rsinc.com). ...
>
> Good suggestion, perhaps, but I was more interested in function call
> libraries to do PostScript plotting.
That was the reason why I didn't really want to use gnuplot either. It
has enough features for my purpose, but calling an external program
for a little linegraph seems somewhat ugly.
My favorite solution would have been something integrated into Xforms,
as this package seems to be very well supported (Thanks to all of you)
and I would like to minimize my dependency on as few packages as
possible.
The program I am trying to replace with an Xfrom-based one was written
with the Khoros library. This library had very limited plotting
support, but one could basically choose writting to a X-window or to a
file, the latter was done in Postscript. The beauty of this setup is
that with the same code I can generate both plots (screen and print)
by just changing the "output device".
> I've developed a couple of functions but they're of limited use in
> that they're pretty application specific and don't support a lot of
> features, like overlays, etc., that I don't currently use.
Same problem everywhere ... ;-)
> NCAR used to put out a FORTRAN-based (yeah, I know) plot package
> called NCARGraphics but it was large and pretty unwieldy for the
> average user.
NCAR Graphics is at Version 4.0.1 now, with GUI and all kinds of fancy
things. The low-level routines are also still there. I had written a
pretty extensive plotting package with NCAR 3.0 at some point. It
needs some time to get all the ideas, but it is VERY powerfull as
well. I would recommend it to anybody that has to do fancy graphics,
especially with geographical data. See http://ngwww.ucar.edu/ngdoc/
for online documentation. Again, its overkill for my current
application and it also relies on calling external programs for the
translation to Postscript.
There is also GMT http:www.soest.hawaii.edu/soest/gmt.html for similar
purposes. If I remember right, there is even a library for generating
Postscript. I'll look into it and post my findings.
Fritz
-- Dr. Fritz Zaucker, Head IT Support Group Departement of Electrical Engineering, Federal Institute of Technology ETZ J97, Gloriastrasse 35, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland Tel.: +41-1-632-5241 Fax: +41-1-632-1194 http://www.ee.ethz.ch/~zaucker/ E-mail: zaucker@ee.ethz.ch (see home page for PGP key) _________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, send the message "unsubscribe" to xforms-request@bob.usuf2.usuhs.mil or see http://bob.usuf2.usuhs.mil/mailserv/xforms.html Xforms Home Page: http://bragg.phys.uwm.edu/xforms List Archive: http://bob.usuf2.usuhs.mil/mailserv/list-archives/