Appendix C Sec1
PLOTPLUS HISTORY, EVOLUTION
Plotplus is a scientific graphics package with a long history. I have traced it only a small distance, and what I know is sketchy. My present understanding is that a number of users at the Oregon State University department of Oceanography contributed over a number of year to a graphics package with both original and pre-existing algorithms and code; PLOT1, PLOT2, PLOT3 and PLOT4 successively became the current standard. Don Denbo took a strong interest in improving the package; from his work evolved PLOT5. He came to PMEL, improved PLOT5 further, and Plotplus was born. While here he made modifications for the TMAP group to that code to support the Graphics Kernel System, GKS, an international standard for programming computer graphics applications. This user's guide describes modifications I made to Plotplus to extend the use of GKS within it; this version will no doubt evolve as well.
The guide addresses itself only to the TMAP modifications to Plotplus. The Plotplus manual describes all other aspects of the current version as supported by its author and should be consulted for information about using Plotplus.
The TMAP GKS enhancements of Plotplus include modification and addition of several PPL commands, including:
ALINE,
CLSPLT,
COLOR,
CONSET,
FILL,
LINE,
LIST,
PEN,
PLTNME,
PLTYPE,
SHADE,
SHAKEY,
SHASET.
This version of PPL+ is modified to be used with the public domain GKS library XGKS. X Windows is the only supported device type. There is in addition a utility, gksm2ps, to generate monochrome and color hard copy of PPL+ plots. `gksm2ps' was written by Larry Oolman at the University of Wyoming; I modified it for use with PPL+. Please see the Ferret Users Guide for information on using gksm2ps.