Re: Diffraction Program and

[mooney@oxygen.aps1.anl.gov (Tim Mooney)]

Guy Jennings writes:

>         Reply to:   RE>>Diffraction Program and 
> Re: PLPLOT
> 
> No Mac support then ?

Maybe the lack of bit-mapped font support in PLPLOT turned Mac programmers off.

> I don't think that we should get involved in producing 'fancy' plots
> ourselves since there are so many commercial packages out there which can do
> a far better job than we will ever do.

Agreed.  This is primarily for online plots; one important criterion is
the ability to plot data points as they are acquired.  I'd also like
the ability to place a plot automatically on the page, so I can easily
print it onto a label and stick it into the data book.  The
scissors/tape/glue-stick business leaves me cold.  Of course this may
be moot if we go to online data books.

> I think that what we need is a plot primarily intended for rapid
> visualisation of just acquired data.   We should keep everything as simple as
> possible - all the axis scaling, labeling etc. should be entirely automatic. 
> The only thing the user should need to do might be to change the range of
> values being viewed and choose which data to plot.   A simple 'magnifying
> glass' tool in a palette would allow the viewed range to be chosen easily -
> with the following behaviour:
> ...

Yeah.  That's what PLPLOT does.  Only the tk driver provides for GUI-driven
print, zoom, and pan, however, although the author of the X driver has made
noises about similar features.

Tim