For a short tutorial on how to use Plotter, and to see more examples, click here
If you are on the Applied Math computers, you can simply type 'plotter' to start Plotter running on your terminal. Plotter contains Help windows to get you started looking at sample data and to explain its features.
Plotter produces postscript output for printing but the interface is written using the X Window system which allows powerful but simple interactive manipulation of the plots.
The surface plots can be viewed from any angle using the arrow keys on the keyboard to "fly" around the plot. Colours and greyscale can be used to highlight features, and the shading format can also easily be custom-built.
It is also easy to add scaled and rotated text to the plots.
Plotter can be downloaded (free, of course). It should run on Linux and Digital Unix machines, and I know it compiles OK on a Sun Alpha. To install plotter, type
gunzip Plotter1.tar.gz tar -xvf Plotter1.tar cd Plotter1 make make installand you should now be able to type "plotter" and get the main window.
However, if you are not the root user on your machine or don't want to install plotter in /usr/bin and /usr/lib/plotter, after gunzipping and before making, you may need to change the
PLOTTER_DIR=/usr/lib/plotterline in Makefile to
$(HOME)/plotterso that it installs in your home directory, and
define DEMO1 "/home/jsk/Plotter1/mod" define DEMO2 "/home/jsk/Plotter1/sin1"in defs.h to point to those files in your own Plotter1 directory. Sorry it's a bit messy just now.
Help is available by clicking the "Help" button. Please send me suggestions, bug reports and fixes by e-mail.
Also, if you end up using plotter a lot, to produce output for publication etc., I would appreciate a short e-mail (a small price to pay for free software, no?).
Plotter, and this web page, are both still under development, so keep checking back for the latest version.