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|
____ __ ______ _ _ PYXPLOT
| _ \ _ _\ \/ / _ \| | ___ | |_ Version 0.6.3.1
| |_) | | | |\ /| |_) | |/ _ \| __| 26/02/2006
| __/| |_| |/ \| __/| | (_) | |_
|_| \__, /_/\_\_| |_|\___/ \__| Copyright (C) 2006 Dominic Ford
|___/
With thanks to Joerg Lehmann and Andre Wobst for writing PyX, and to
Ross Church for his many helpful suggestions along the way.
Send comments, bug reports, feature requests and coffee supplies to:
<coders@pyxplot.org.uk>
-----
1. INTRODUCTION
PyXPlot is a commandline graphing package, which, for ease of use, has an
interface based heavily upon that of gnuplot -- perhaps UNIX's most widely-used
plotting package. Despite the shared interface, however, PyXPlot is intended to
significantly improve upon the quality of gnuplot's output, producing
publication-quality figures. The commandline interface has also been extended,
providing a wealth of new features, and short-cuts for some operations which
were felt to be excessively cumbersome in the original.
The motivation behind PyXPlot's creation was the apparent lack of a free
plotting package which combined both high-quality output and a simple
interface. Some -- pgplot for one -- provided very attractive output, but
required a program to be written each time a plot was to be produced -- a
potentially time consuming task. Others, gnuplot being the prime example, were
quick and simple to use, but produced less attractive results.
PyXPlot attempts to fill that gap, offering the best of both worlds. Though the
interface is based upon that of gnuplot, text is now rendered with all of the
beauty and flexibility of the LaTeX typesetting environment; the "multiplot"
environment is made massively more flexible, making it easy to produce
galleries of plots; and the range of possible output formats is extended -- to
name but a few of the enhancements. A number of examples of the results of
which PyXPlot is capable can be seen on the PyXPlot website:
<http://www.srcf.ucam.org/pyxplot/>.
2. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
PyXPlot is presently only supported for Linux. It requires that the following
software packages (not included) be installed:
bash (The bash shell)
python (Version 2.3 or later)
latex (Used for all textual labels)
convert (ImageMagick; needed for the gif, png and jpg terminals)
The following package is not required for installation, but many PyXPlot
features are disabled when it is not present, including the fit and spline
commands and the integration of functions. It is very strongly recommended:
scipy (Python Scientific Library)
The following package is not required for installation, but it is not possible
to use the X11 terminal, i.e. to display plots on screen, without it:
gv (Ghostview; used for the X11 terminal)
3. INSTALLATION
3A. INSTALLATION AS USER
The following steps describe the installation of PyXPlot from a .tar.gz archive
by a user without superuser (i.e. root) access to his machine. It is assumed
that the packages listed above have already been installed; if they are not,
you need to contact your system administrator.
* Unpack the distributed .tar.gz:
tar xvfz pyxplot_0.6.3.1.tar.gz
cd pyxplot
* Run the installation script:
./configure
make
* Finally, start PyXPlot:
./pyxplot
3B. SYSTEM-WIDE INSTALLATION
Having completed the steps described above, PyXPlot may be installed
system-wide by a superuser with the following additional step:
make install
By default, the PyXPlot executable installs to /usr/local/bin/pyxplot. If
desired, this installation path may be modified in the file Makefile.skel, by
changing the variable USRDIR in the first line to an alternative desired
installation location.
PyXPlot may now be started by any system user, simply by typing:
pyxplot
4. FURTHER INFORMATION
Full documentation can be found in doc/pyxplot.tex , or in doc/pyxplot.pdf
after installation. This document is alternatively available from the PyXPlot
website: <http://www.pyxplot.org.uk/>.
----
Dominic Ford
|
