README

PDL::Graphics::PLplot

This is a simple perl/PDL interface to the PLplot plotting library.

http://plplot.sourceforge.net/

I wrote this primarily for web graphics as an alternative to PDL::Graphics::PGPLOT.

The advantages of PLplot over PGPLOT are these:

-- It is written all in (generally well structured, comprehensible) C
   (so you don't need a FORTRAN compiler as for PGPLOT).
-- It is in current development
-- It has a simple autoconf installation with built-in PNG support

(The disadvantage is that it is missing some of PGPLOT's many features).

The interface consists of two levels.  A low level interface which maps closely to
the PLplot C interface, and a high level, object-oriented interface which is easier to 
use.

Examples:

use PDL:
use PDL::Graphics::PLplot;

# Line plot of two 1D PDLs $x and $y
my $pl = PDL::Graphics::PLplot->new (DEV => "png", FILE => "test1.png");
$pl->xyplot($x, $y, PLOTTYPE => 'LINE', COLOR => 'GREEN', 
	            TITLE => 'Sample plot', XLAB => 'frobnitz', YLAB => 'widgets/sec');
$pl->close;

# Shade plot of a 2D PDL in $z
my $pl = PDL::Graphics::PLplot->new (DEV => 'png', FILE => "test2.png");
$pl->shadeplot ($z, $nsteps, BOX => [-1, 1, -1, 1], PALETTE => 'RAINBOW');
$pl->colorkey ($z, 'v', VIEWPORT => [0.93, 0.96, 0.15, 0.85]);
$pl->close;

For more examples, see the test suite in t/plplot.t.

PREREQUISITES:

perl 5.8 or higher
PDL 2.3 or more recent
PLplot 5.1.0 or later.  Last tested with version 5.9.7 SVN (4/29/2011).

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Important:  plplot *must* be compiled --with-double so that all floating
  point numbers used are doubles.  Install plplot similar to this:

# ./configure --with-double
# make
# make install

On some systems (IRIX, for one) it may be necessary to compile plplot
without fortran support:  --disable-f77.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

INSTALLATION:
 
Installation should be the normal:
 
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
 
(as root)
make install
 
Best of luck!
 
Doug Hunt
dhunt@ucar.edu
Software Engineer III
UCAR - GPS/MET