Quickplot Help

Zooming

Zooming In   Put the pointer (mouse) on a corner of plot region you want to zoom to.  Press the right mouse button and hold and drag the zoom box.  Release the right mouse button then it is at another corner of the zoom region.  Now Quickplot will zoom into that zoom region.

You can zoom in as many times as you like, or calculations will permit.  In all cases we've seen round off problems don't happen until you are looking past at one data point in the plot window.  Quickplot will print a warning message to standard output if this happens.  This happens when you zoom in so far as to make it so that the pixel distance between two adjacent points is about 10 ⁹ pixels.  Quickplot culls out points that are not adjacent to the plot window or in the plot window.  Quickplot linearly interpolates lines to points adjacent to points in the plot window or on other sides of the plot window.

Zooming Out    Put the pointer (mouse) in the plot window.  Press the right mouse button and hold and drag the zoom box.  Release the right mouse button then it (the zoom box) is past one edge of the plot window.  Now Quickplot will zoom out to the previous zoom level.

Or to zoom out to a full view (top zoom level) of the plot: Put the pointer (mouse) in the plot window.  Press the right mouse button and hold and drag the zoom box.  Release the right mouse button then the zoom box is past two edges (a corner) of the plot window.  Now Quickplot will zoom out to the top zoom level (no zoom).

Graph Value Picking

The left mouse button is used for picking and displaying X and Y values from the graph.  Just try it and see.

There are three modes of number display value picking, which may be selected on the Plot List pop-up window:

• Pick Pointer Values   shows values where the mouse pointer is in the scale of the respective plot
• Interpolate Plot Values   shows values where the X position of the mouse pointer is with the Y value displayed being a linearly interpolated value
• Pick Plot Point Values   shows X and Y plot point positions that are closest to mouse pointer X position.

Loadable File Formats

• ASCII text   Quickplot can load ASCII text (plan text) files.  The number of fields (numbers) on each line must be the same.  Any number of non-number characters other than a new line character may used to separate numbers on a given line.  The characters in numbers can only be the following 15 characters ".+-eE0123456789".  Example:

  -1   -1.3    -1
  0    1.1e-2   0
  2    1.2E-2   1
  30   1.3e+2   3
  

  The above example has three fields and four values for each field.  A file may have any counting number of fields, that's 1,2,3,4 or more fields.  If a file is loaded with a single field an additional field, with the same number of values as the field in the file, will be added before the field from the file.  Quickplot can read ASCII text files from standard input.

• libsndfile sound file   Using the package libsndfile Quickplot can read many sound file formats.  An incomplete list of readable sound file formats includes: Microsoft WAV, SGI/Apple AIFF/AIFC, and Sun/DEC/NeXT AU/SND..  See the libsndfile home-page for a full list of supported sound file formats. 

  When loading a sound file the first field (sequence) loaded will be the time sequence, then each sound channel will follow in separate fields. Quickplot may be a little slow with sound files larger than thirty seconds long.  Thirty seconds of sound sampled at 44KHZ with one channel would load 1.32 million data points.  Quickplot cannot read sound files from standard input.

Quickly looking at a hundred thousand, a million, or more data points?

If you need to look at large files quickly, try running Quickplot including the two options '--no-lines' and '--point-size=0' in the command line.  This will make the plot drawing and redrawing as fast as it can be at the expense of having points that are just one pixel in size, which should be no problem if you have that many points.  Once you zoom to a picture that you like you can increase the point size or add lines, using the GUI (graphical user interface), if you need to.  Quickplot loads the entire file into memory for any file loaded, so you may need to be careful of your memory usage when working with large files.

By default plots created in Quickplot with 1,000,000 or more points will by drawn without lines and points of size one pixel, unless the user has included one or more of the following options in the command line: --no-lines, --no-points, --line-width, or --point-size.  For plots with less than 1,000,000 points the default line width is 3 pixels and the default point size is 5 pixels.

On a 2.4 Gig Hz Pentium 4 (with Gentoo GNU/Linux) with 256 Megabytes of RAM it has been observed to take 8 seconds to load and display an ASCII text file with 1 million data points; after startup it was observed to take about one second to redraw with the one million points in view.  When repeating this with lines of width 3 pixels and points of size 5 pixels the loading time is about the same and the drawing time increases by about 3 seconds.  Drawing time didn't seem to vary with window size.

Command Line Options

If no -p or --plot option is given then the default initial plots will be up to 12 plots.  The default initial plots will be of all fields, except the first field in the order that the field was loaded from a file plotted against the first field in the file.  If a file contains one field (like a sound file) than a field that contains a linear (time) sequence of values will be generated before the file's field is loaded. If standard input is read it will be the first file loaded.

• --about or -a   display some information about Quickplot
• --canvas-color RGB or -c RGB   start quickplot with the graph background (canvas) color RGB. Examples: --canvas-color #FF0000 or --canvas-color "red" would make it red.
• --different-scales or -d   load plots on the same graph with different scales. By default Quickplot will load plots on the same graph with the same scale if the span of x,y values in all the plots are within an order of magnitude of each other.
• --geometry GEOMETRY or -geometry GEOMETRY   create the initial window with the given geometry GEOMETRY, see man page X(1) for the GEOMETRY format. Example: quickplot --geometry=1000x300-0+30
• --grid-color RGB or -C RGB   start quickplot with the grid color RGB. Example: --grid-color #00FF00 would make it green.

  RGB may be in one of these formats:

  • #RGB (each of R, G and B is a single hex digit)
  • #RRGGBB
  • #RRRGGGBBB
  • #RRRRGGGGBBBB
  • A name from the X color database, which may be in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb.txt. Example colors are "steelblue" and "gainsboro".

• --grid-line-width SIZE or -g SIZE   start quickplot using plot grid width SIZE in pixels
• --help or -h   display this help
• --label-separator CHAR or -b CHAR   when reading labels from the last file in the augment list before this option flag use CHAR as the label (single character) separator. The default label separator is ' ' (space). If this file is not an ASCII text file this will be ignored. See option: --labels or -L.
• --labels or -L   read labels from the first line not skipped of the last file in the augment list before this option flag. If this file is not an ASCII text file this will be ignored.
• --line-width SIZE or -I SIZE   start quickplot using plot line width SIZE in pixels
• --linear-field [L_OPTIONS] or -l [L_OPTIONS]   make a field that is a uniformly changing linear sequence of values, like for example time.  The number of values will be gotten from the previous file's values loaded.  The field generated will be added as the first field of the previous file. For sound files this option is ignored.
  L_OPTIONS

  The L_OPTIONS only have an effect after the --linear-field (or -l) option and they act on the field made from that argument.  The L_OPTIONS are:

  • --start VALUE or -r VALUE   set the first value in the sequence to VALUE.  The The default first value will be zero.
  • --step SIZE or -t SIZE   set the sequence step size to SIZE.  The default is 1.

• --no-buttons or -B   start quickplot with no button bar
• --no-default-plots   by default when no --plot or -p options are given Quickplot will make some plots with the files loaded at start up. This option will cause Quickplot not to make these default plots.   When files are loaded using the GUI defaults plot will not be made if this is set.
• --no-grid or -G   start quickplot with out drawing graph grid lines, by default, in the graphs
• --no-gui   start quickplot with out showing any of the standard GUI's (graphical user interfaces). This is the same as uses the options --no-buttons --no-menubar --no-statusbar and --no-tabs.
• --no-lines or -i   start quickplot to plot without drawing lines in the graphs by default
• --no-menubar or -M   start quickplot with no menubar
• --no-pipe or -N   don't read data in from standard input
• --no-points or -o   start quickplot to plot without drawing points in the graphs by default
• --no-statusbar   start Quickplot with no status bar displayed. The Quickplot status bar is a thin widget at the bottom of the main Quickplot window which displays pointer x, y graph values and mode information.
• --no-tabs   start Quickplot with no graph tabs displayed. Quickplot uses a notebook like widget to let you select and view multiple graphs.
• --number-of-plots NUM or -n NUM   set the possible initial number of plots to NUM.  The default possible initial number of plots is 12.
• --pipe or -P   read in data from standard input.  By default Quickplot looks for data from standard input and stops looking if no data is found in some short amount of time.  This option will cause Quickplot to wait for standard input indefinitely.
• --plot LIST or -p LIST   plot the following list of fields, LIST, at startup.  example: --plot "0 1 3 4" will plot field 1 VS field 0 and field 4 VS field 3.  DataFields are numbered, starting at 0, in the order that they are read in from a file or created, as in the case of option --linear-field.  A separate Graph Tab will be created for each --plot (or -p) option given.
• --point-size SIZE or -O SIZE   start quickplot using plot point size SIZE in pixels
• --print-about   prints the About HTML document to standard output and then exits
• --print-help   prints this Help HTML document to standard output and then exits
• --same-scale or -s   plot all start-up plots on the same scale
• --silent   don't spew even on error.  The --silent option will override the effect of the --verbose option.
• --skip-lines NUM or -S NUM    skip the first NUM lines in the previous file read. The previous file in the argument list should be an ASCII text file.
• --verbose or -v   spew more to standard output
• --version or -V   print the Quickplot version number and then exit returning 0 exit status
• --with-libsndfile   if %PACKAGE% is linked with the libsndfile library, print the version of the libsndfile library that %PACKAGE% is linked with, and exit returning status 0 if %PACKAGE% is linked with the libsndfile library and 1 if %PACKAGE% is not linked with the libsndfile library
   
• GTK+ OPTIONS
  The following GTK+ options are parsed by the gtkmm and GTK+ APIs (application programming interfaces), which Quickplot uses.

  --gdk-debug=FLAGS	Gdk debugging flags to set
  --gdk-no-debug=FLAGS	Gdk debugging flags to unset
  --display=DISPLAY	X display to use
  --screen=SCREEN	X screen to use
  --sync	Make X calls synchronous
  --name=NAME	Program name as used by the window manager
  --class=CLASS	Program class as used by the window manager
  --gxid-host=HOST
  --gxid-port=PORT
  --gtk-debug=FLAGS	Gtk+ debugging flags to set
  --gtk-no-debug=FLAGS	Gtk+ debugging flags to unset
  --g-fatal-warnings	Make all warnings fatal
  --gtk-module=MODULE	Load an additional Gtk module

Key Bindings

Quickplot has GUIs for all of the following immutable keyboard short-cuts:

• a   show information about Quickplot using a web browser
• b   toggles the visibility of the button bar
• c   copies the current focused main window frame
• d   delete the main window. This will not close the last main window.
• f   makes a new main window frame
• g   show/hide the graph configuration widget
• h   show help using a web browser
• i   save a PNG image of the graph
• m   show/hide the menu bar
• n   make a new graph
• o   open a data file
• p   show/hide the plot lister widget
• q   quit
• s   toggles the visibility of the status bar
• t   toggles the visibility of the graph tabs
• esc   close the current focused window. This will not close the last main window.