[304] in linux-announce channel archive
pgperl graphics package
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lars Wirzenius)
Mon Mar 13 17:52:42 1995
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 14:40:37 +0200
From: Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi>
To: linux-activists@niksula.hut.fi, linux-announce@vger.rutgers.edu
X-Mn-Key: announce
From: kgb@astronomy.cambridge.ac.uk (Karl Glazebrook)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce
Subject: pgperl graphics package
Followup-To: sci.astro.research
Organization: Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
Keywords: software graphics astronomy perl
Approved: linux-announce@news.ornl.gov (Lars Wirzenius)
[Note: this message was posted to Newsgroups: sci.astro.research, uk.org.starlink.software, ucam.ast.announce, comp.lang.perl a few
days ago - it has since been suggested I should post it here too
- Karl.]
PGPERL - A GRAPHICS EXTENSION FOR PERL - A MACRO LANGUAGE FOR PGPLOT
This is to announce the public availability of the 'pgperl' package, a
version of the Perl 4.0 language which has been linked against the
PGPLOT FORTRAN library, a very popular package for plotting
astronomical data. (As a glance through any issue of the journals ApJ
or MNRAS will confirm.)
The idea is to provide an interpreted language for PGPLOT to enable
complex diagrams to be developed more quickly and easily - I have
always thought that PGPLOT produced very high quality plots but at
great expense owing to the long compile/link/run cycle of F77 or C,
and have always wished for some kind of powerful macro language.
With pgperl this is now possible using the elegant perl language, which
is very powerful for parsing data from files in a variety of complex
formats. All the pgplot graphics routines are available directly as
perl subroutines and the use is fairly intuitive to those who know
PGPLOT and perl.
pgperl is implemented as a standalone executable - perl recompiled with
PGPLOT linked in via the user extension mechanism. It is available by
anonymous ftp from the following ftp sites:
ftp.ast.cam.ac.uk:/pub/kgb/pgperl/ (United Kingdom home site)
linux.nrao.edu:/pub/packages/pgperl/ (United States ftp mirror)
Source is provided, as well as binaries for the following
architectures: SunOS,Solaris,Linux,OSF/1.
There is also a pgperl WWW page which provides more information,
documentation and some example code:
http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~kgb/pgperl.html
The current version is 1.0 and it is built with PGPLOT v5.0 commands
and perl v4.036. The software was originally developed for my own use,
I have now decided to make it freely available (but see the file
LICENSE in the distribution for conditions).
Karl Glazebrook
---
kgb@ast.cam.ac.uk Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge
http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~kgb/ Will measure redshifts for IP
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