The Plotutils Package - plot Examples

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## How to use `plot`

The GNU plot filter `plot` displays GNU graphics metafiles or translates them to other formats. It will take input from files specified on the command line or from standard input. The ``-T'` option is used to specify the desired output format. Supported output formats include "X", "pnm", "gif", "ai", "ps", "fig", "pcl", "hpgl", "tek", and "meta" (the default).

The metafile format is a device-independent format for storage of vector graphics. By default, it is a binary rather than a human-readable format (see section The Graphics Metafile Format). Each of the `graph`, `pic2plot`, `tek2plot`, and `plotfont` utilities will write a graphics metafile to standard output if no ``-T'` option is specified on its command line. The `libplot` graphics library may also be used to produce metafiles. Metafiles may contain arbitrarily many pages of graphics, but each metafile produced by `graph` contains only a single page.

`plot`, like the metafile format itself, is useful if you wish to preserve a vector graphics file, and display or edit it with more than one drawing editor. The following example shows how you may do this.

To produce a plot of data arranged as alternating x and y coordinates in an ASCII file, you may use `graph` as follows:

    graph < ascii_data_file > test.meta

The file ``test.meta'` will be a single-page graphics metafile. Similarly, to create in metafile format a plot consisting of a simple figure, you may do:

    echo 0 0 1 1 2 0 | spline | graph > test.meta

To display any such plot on an X Window System display, you would do

    plot -T X test.meta

or

    plot -T X < test.meta

To print the plot on a Postscript printer, you would do something like

    plot -T ps < test.meta | lpr

To edit it with the free `idraw` drawing editor, you would do

    plot -T ps < test.meta > test.ps
    idraw test.ps

To produce a "portable anymap" (a file in PBM, PGM, or PPM format, whichever is most appropriate) you would do

    plot -T pnm < test.meta > test.pnm

and to produce a pseudo-GIF file, you would do

    plot -T gif < test.meta > test.gif

Similarly, to produce a version of the plot that can be edited with Adobe Illustrator, you would do

    plot -T ai < test.meta > test.ai

and to produce a version that can be edited with the free `xfig` drawing editor, you would do

    plot -T fig < test.meta > test.fig
    xfig test.fig

Other formats may be obtained by using `plot -T pcl`, `plot -T hpgl`, and `plot -T tek`.

`plot` may behave differently depending on the environment in which it is invoked. In particular, `plot -T ai`, `plot -T ps`, `plot -T fig`, `plot -T pcl`, and `plot -T hpgl` are affected by the environment variable `PAGESIZE`. `plot -T X`, `plot -T pnm`, and `plot -T gif` are affected by the environment variable `BITMAPSIZE`. The `DISPLAY` environment variable affects the operation of `plot -T X`, and the `TERM` environment variable affects the operation of `plot -T tek`. There are also several environment variables that affect the operation of `plot -T pcl` and `plot -T hpgl`. For a complete discussion of the effects of the environment on `plot`, see section Environment variables.

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