On 2011-10-26 11:03-0700 Alan W. Irwin wrote: > On 2011-10-26 11:53+0100 Steve Schwartz wrote: > >> While I'm writing, if someone does try to put together a tutorial >> system/prescription, and even if they don't, a very simple real working >> example would be a good addition. The various examples shiped with >> plplot are a really excellent and fairly exhaustive demonstration of the >> various features and capabilities of plplot, and are the first place for >> an already-initiated user to go. But a real newbie, just trying to plot >> a simple graph, will get lost. The plplot documentation has an initial >> chapter about "Simple use of plplot" which works through the basic >> interface and simplest api functions, but doesn't actually show a >> working bit of code. >> >> I'd suggest writing x00 that: >> >> 1. calculates y=x^2 for x =0,1,2,3,4,5 >> 2. initiates plplot with plinit >> 3. sets up the plot with plenv >> 4. plots this as a (default) line with plline >> 5. plots this as a set of points with plpoin >> 6. ends >> >> (i.e., follows the Simple Use chapter). This is plplot's answer to >> "Hello World", and a tutorial build should start here to focus on the >> make, compile, link, run, drivers, etc. machinery. Once this is working >> for a user, the rest is easy. And, of course, such a user could use the >> same machinery with any of the other xnn example source code and hack >> them to do more sophisicated things. > > Thanks, Steve, for this suggestion which I really like. > > To the PLplot developers here: I think we should implement standard > example x00 in C similar to the way Steve described with the emphasis > on keeping it an extraordinarily simple plot as described in > http://plplot.sourceforge.net/docbook-manual/plplot-html-5.9.9/simple.html. > We should then propagate example 0 to all our languages. > > If the developers here agree with this plan, then I volunteer to take > responsibility for implementing the C example part of this as well as > the trivial build-system and script changes necessary to include this > example. I should be able to help with some of the propagation efforts > as well.
As promised, I have now (revision 12001) implemented x00c.c and made the necessary changes to incorporate this example into our build and test systems. I deliberately kept it extremely simple for the reasons that were discussed earlier in this thread. For example, the default colour scheme is used, and I only demonstrated a line plot with no symbols. Please try (with -DBUILD_TEST=ON) make x00c examples/c/x00c -dev whatever to review what this example looks like. Of course, also please review examples/c/x00c.c for overall understandability since this example is likely to be used in a PLplot tutorial. Within the overall constraint that we want to keep this example as simple as possible, let me know if you have any suggestions to change the plotted result or the understandability of the code. I hope this review period can be fairly short (a day or so) since any individual review should only take a few minutes for such simple code and results. Once the review period is completed, this example should be propagated to other languages. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The demand for IT networking professionals continues to grow, and the demand for specialized networking skills is growing even more rapidly. Take a complimentary Learning@Cisco Self-Assessment and learn about Cisco certifications, training, and career opportunities. http://p.sf.net/sfu/cisco-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
