Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!bbn!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!cadre!pitt!cisunx!ejkst
From: ejkst@cisunx.UUCP (Eric J. Kennedy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: plotting and math packages
Keywords: math, 3d plots, graphing
Message-ID: <12065@cisunx.UUCP>
Date: 26 Aug 88 08:13:22 GMT
References: <3040@utastro.UUCP>
Reply-To: ejkst@unix.cis.pittsburgh.edu (Eric J. Kennedy)
Organization: Univ. of Pittsburgh, Comp & Info Sys
Lines: 58

In article <3040@utastro.UUCP> dhines@utastro.UUCP (Dean Hines) writes:

>  Does anyone know of a package for plotting data or equations on the 
>amiga?  Ideally the package would allow for both two and three D plots,
>auto-scaling, and the other basic features of programs like Genplot,
>PGplot, and Plotter.

I use a shareware plotting program called MultiPlot.  It is a fairly
simple program, but happens to match my needs almost perfectly, so I
use it _very_ heavily.  (I use it so much that as soon as I finish this
research and degree and get a real job, I'm going to send that guy his
shareware fee.) It only does 2D plots, though.  It will plot up to (I
think) 10 sets of data at once, optionally including error bars.  It
reads data from one input file, and the data can be in any number of
columns.  You specify the columns to use for x, y, and e (error) from
the command line.

For instance, my data is in 6 columns, some including text, like so:

249000.000    RX    6200.000   NX    0.00245    -6200.000

Column 1 is my x coordinate and column 6 is my y coordinate, so I
specify a command line of "multiplot -x1y6".

You can plot lines or points, zoom in and around your graph, etc.  It
uses a 16 color 640 x 400 screen, so the screen looks very nice.  It
has absolutely no provisions for titles or axis labels, however.  It
does number the axes using topaz 8.  Multiplot will plot to an HPGL
plotter, but only the axes, tic marks, and plots come out.  (In
color.)  The numbers are not plotted.

Multiplot will also output a text file that can be imported into mCAD,
a shareware cad program by the same author, or IntroCAD, the commercial
successor to mCAD.  I import the text file into mCAD, put labels and
legends and numbers on it, then use mCAD's printing function to dump it
to my epson compatible.  (It gives _much_ nicer output than is possible
with the normal system screen dump, because it provides a higher
resolution.  However, it only works if you can write a printer
definition file that works, and that's only for 9 pin printers.)

If anybody knows of a 3D plotting package, I also would be interested in
this.  (for plotting data, not equations)


>	Dean C. Hines
>	Dept. of Astronomy 
>	University of Texas
>	Austin, Texas 78712

>	dhines@utastro.uucp
>	dhines@astro.as.utexas.edu



-- 
------------
Eric Kennedy
ejkst@cisunx.UUCP