11.3 PLXY

The program PLXY is an universal plot program for VMS and UNIX. The UNIX version is based on the PGPLOT graphics subroutine library which is provided by the California Institute of Technology (in the www, a documentation about this library is found under http://astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/pgplot/#documentation). It expects in the plot data file only a x-y table. Optional, commands can be given either by keywords (see below) in the plot data file or interactively.

11.3.1 Keywords for Commands in Plot Data Files

The program PLXY accepts some commands given in the plot data file which can be inserted at every position but flushed to the left. Valid are the last commands given before the end of a data set. Strings, e.g. for a comment, start directly after the “:” -- without any “”.

• 0: origin of the plot (X₀,Y₀ in cm), new plot box
  
• A: abscissa label, OFF: no label
  
• B: width of plot box given in cm
  
• C: color index, 16 colors are predefined (Fig. 1), they can be changed interactively
• D: line style
  1 full line
  2 dashed
  3 dot-dash-dot-dash
  4 dotted
  5 dash-dot-dot-dot
  
• E: distance of tick marks
  
• H: height of plot box given in cm
  
• K: comment
  
• M: star position for sky map, Example:
  
• M: 1 0 03 44.0 -44 04 12.0
  Longmore 4
  
• N: new data set
  
• O: ordinate label, OFF: no label
  
• P: thickness of line
  
• S: plot symbols, numbers taken from the PGPLOT symbols, a small selection is summarized in Tab.2
  
• T: title
  
• X: X_min X_max
  
• Y: Y _min Y _max
  

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Table 2: Selection of plot symbols available for the use in PLXY # symbol 840 o 841 842 843 844 * 845 + 846 × 847 *

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11.3.2 Output devices

Three output devices can be requested:

• /dev/null, i.e. no output
• PostScript file plxy_xxxx.eps, xxxx is a running counter
• screen