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Introduction

PGPLOT^12.1 is a flexible and well known 2-dimensional (line plots and rasters) FORTRAN and C callable library. PGPLOT has been bound to Glish so that Glish users can embed PGPLOT widgets into their Glish/Tk GUI windows. While the PGPLOT library itself has a large number of device drivers, only the Tk and PostScript drivers are available from Glish. PGPLOT was developed and is maintained by Tim Pearson. PGPLOT is copyrighted software; not public domain. For further information see the PGPLOT home page. The AIPS++ PGPLOT widget is a variant of Martin Shepherd's Tcl/Tk PGPLOT widget. It was adapted for use with Rivet and AIPS++ through a collaboration between its author and Darrell Schiebel.

Naturally, any limitations inherent in the PGPLOT package itself will be manifested in the Glish implementation of PGPLOT. For example, PGPLOT may not display data and axis labels properly when 7 or more significant digits are required for axis labeling.

Besides having PGPLOT functionality directly available to the Glish programmer and user, the primary advantage of having PGPLOT directly bound to Glish is that the PGPLOT widget can be embedded into larger control panels. For example, you can use a glish widget as a ``chart recorder'' in some larger GUI device controller.

All PGPLOT functionality is available from the Glish command line. The functionality is generally invoked from Glish in much the same way as the subroutine libraries except:

• The method names are in lower case.
• The leading ``pg'' is dropped from the method names. In Glish the method names are bound to an agent, which means they are not in the global namespace and thus do not need a prefix to avoid name collisions.
• Array lengths do not need to be passed in, since in Glish the length of an array is known. So, for example, the arguments of line are (xpts, ypts) not (n, xpts, ypts) as it is in FORTRAN or C
• Similarly, the subregion (``I1, I2, J1, J2'') arguments have been removed from the ``2D'' methods. Glish has more flexible array subregioning abilities.
• Output values are returned from the method, whereas in the FORTRAN and C versions the arguments are changed in place.
• Cursor and keyboard handling is considerably different (greatly improved!).

At present, the only PGPLOT device drivers which are bound to Glish are:

XRV

This is the TkPGPLOT X widget. It is always implicitly opened when a PGPLOT widget is created. It should not be reopended (e.g., with open() or beg()).

PS

PostScript file, landscape orientation.

VPS

PostScript file, portrait orientation.

CPS

Colour PostScript file, landscape orientation.

VCPS

Colour PostScript file, portrait orientation.

If you forget the available PGPLOT drivers, you can find out which ones are available with pg->ldev ().