README for SciPlot Widget, version 1.3
Robert W. McMullen <rwmcm@orion.ae.utexas.edu>
20 Feb 1996


OVERVIEW

The SciPlot Widget is a widget capable of plotting cartesian or polar graphs,
including logarithmic axes in cartesian plots.  The widget is subclassed
directly from the Core widget class, which means that it does not depend upon
any other widget set.  It may be freely used with Athena, Motif, or the
Open Look/Xview widget sets.  (There is optional Motif support that causes
the widget to be subclassed from XmPrimitive.  See the man page.)

Features provided in the widget include automatic scaling, legend drawing,
axis labeling, PostScript output, multiple plotted lines, color support, user
font specification, dashed lines, symbols drawn at points, logarithmic scales
on one or both axes in cartesian plots, and degrees or radians as angles in
polar plots.


SOURCE LOCATION

Source code for the SciPlot Widget is available via anonymous ftp on
ftp.x.org in /contrib/widgets as SciPlot-?.?.tar.gz.  I have also set up
the Offical SciPlot Web Site (tm) at
http://www.ae.utexas.edu/~rwmcm/SciPlot.html that should always include the
latest patchlevel update.


REQUIREMENTS

The SciPlot code requires X11R4 or later and a C compiler.  The code was
designed using ANSI C, but compiles fine with a non-ANSI compiler as long as
the compiler understands new-style function prototypes.


DEMO PROGRAMS

Shipped with the source code distribution are two demo programs
that show some of the features of the SciPlot widget.  NOTE!  The demo
programs require Motif, but the SciPlot widget itself does not.

The demo programs will build with LessTif version 0.4 or later!

The program "sciplot" uses x/y data from a text file and pops up a plot
on the screen.  The other program "realtime" shows the new quick updating
feature of the widget, making the widget better suited for realtime display
purposes.

If you have the program imake installed, you may use the supplied Imakefile
to generate a Makefile.  Otherwise, copy the file Makefile.noImake to Makefile,
and edit that to conform to your system.  Actually, other than specifying the
C compiler to use, the Makefile should require little customization.

To generate the Makefile, type:

  xmkmf

To compile both demo programs, type:

  make

See the HTML documentation for more information on using the demo programs,
but a quick start for each of the programs would be:

  sciplot data.txt

  realtime



USING THE WIDGET

Instructions on how to use the SciPlot widget in your own code is documented in
the manual page (SciPlot.man) included with the source code.  The documentation
is now provided in HTML format, and the manual page is generated from the
HTML code.


IMPROVEMENTS/PATCHES/BUG REPORTS

If you make improvements in this widget (or, YIKES!, if you find bugs)
please let me know at rwmcm@orion.ae.utexas.edu, or through the SciPlot
Widget home page at http://www.ae.utexas.edu/~rwmcm/SciPlot.html


ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE LESSTIF PROJECT

I decided to use the Motif toolkit for the demo programs for two reasons.
First, most of the requests that I get (for all my widgets) are "how do
you use this with Motif?", so I decided to help all the Motif users out by
supplying these more complete demos.

And second, (plug, plug) I am now a core team member of the LessTif project.
Although Lesstif cannot quite deal with the complicated demo programs at
the time of this writing, it is quickly developing.  Check the site
http://www.hungry.com/products/lesstif/  for more information.

AUTHOR

Robert W. McMullen <rwmcm@orion.ae.utexas.edu>

See the copyright notice for licensing restrictions.  Note that the GNU
_LIBRARY_ General Public Licesce is not the same as the standard GPL.

Patches, improvements, suggestions, and bug reports are welcome at the above
e-mail address.  I will periodically post patches and improvements to
ftp.x.org and the SciPlot web page at
http://www.ae.utexas.edu/~rwmcm/SciPlot.html



THANKS

Thanks to the following people for providing fixes and suggestions:

Todd Smith <mtsmith@vision1.engr.utk.edu>
Walter Underwood <wunder@msd.hpl.hp.com>
Michael Katzmann <michael%vk2bea@secondsource.com>
John Moyer <jrm@questconsult.com>
Mike Kienenberger <FXMLK@aurora.alaska.edu>
Glenn Golden <gdg@big.att.com>
<SATCHELL%CCF.dnet@hermes.dra.hmg.gb>


COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1996 Robert W. McMullen

Portions of the SciPlot Widget source code, as marked, are:
  Copyright (c) 1993 Alan Richardson (mppa3@syma.sussex.ac.uk)

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
Library General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Library General Public
License along with this library; if not, write to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.