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How to install PGPLOT

Table of Contents

  1. Purpose of PGPLOT within Seitosh
  2. Installation
    1. PGPLOT home
    2. Quick installation guide for use with Seitosh
    3. Environment variables
  3. PGPLOT driver configuration
    1. X Window driver
    2. Postscript driver

Purpose of PGPLOT within Seitosh

PGPLOT is a Fortran graphics library for scientific data display. Many programs in this repository make use of PGPLOT either directly in Fortran or through the C++ API libpgplotxx. PGPLOT supports output to many different devices, including interactive screen plots as well as Postscript files. In the early days PGPLOT was attractive in particular due to his ability to produce interactive screen plots from Fortran 77 on Tektronix terminals (well, this is history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektronix_4010).

Installation

PGPLOT home

Detailed installation instructions are provided at http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/pgplot/install.html with specific notes for UNIX systems.

Quick installation guide for use with Seitosh

  1. Download pgplot5.2.tar.gz from http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/pgplot/ (download address is ftp://ftp.astro.caltech.edu/pub/pgplot/pgplot5.2.tar.gz)

  2. Copy pgplot5.2.tar.gz to ~/repo/pgplot

  3. Extract tar file

    tar xvfpsz pgplot5.2.tar.gz

  4. Rename directory

    mv pgplot pgplot5.2.2

    The contents of the archive now are available in

    ~/repo/pgplot/pgplot5.2.2/

    We call this the ''source-code directory''. Any other directory name or path for the ''source-code directory'' will do as well, just use its name consistently throughout the installation process.

  5. PGPLOT does not come with gfortran support. To use gfortran to compile PGPLOT, you might like to copy one of the files in contrib/pgplot to ~/repo/pgplot/pgplot5.2.2/sys_linux:

    • gfortran_gcc.conf uses standard system library paths
    • gfortran_gcc_64.conf uses path names lib64 to refer to X11 and TK libraries (this is necessary on 64bit systems to links against the 64bit version of the binary library instead of the 32bit version). Edit the files to match your system configuration

  6. Create the library directory

    mkdir -pv ~/repo/pgplot/linuxgfortran

    We call this the ''installation directory''. This will be the initial place for the readily compiled binary libraries, binary executables, font files, and documentation. Any other directory name or path for the ''installation directory'' will do as well, just use its name consistently throughout the installation process.

  7. Change your working directory to the ''installation directory'':

    cd ~/repo/pgplot/linuxgfortran

  8. Copy driver list from the ''source-code directory'' to the ''installation directory'':

    ~/repo/pgplot/linuxgfortran> cp -vpd ~/repo/pgplot/pgplot5.2.2/drivers.list .

  9. Activate drivers by removing exclamation mark in first column for the following drivers in the copy of drivers.list:

     NUDRIV 0 /NULL      Null device (no output)                     Std F77
 PSDRIV 1 /PS        PostScript printers, monochrome, landscape  Std F77
 PSDRIV 2 /VPS       Postscript printers, monochrome, portrait         Std F77
 PSDRIV 3 /CPS       PostScript printers, color, landscape       Std F77
 PSDRIV 4 /VCPS      PostScript printers, color, portrait        Std F77
 TTDRIV 5 /XTERM     XTERM Tektronix terminal emulator                 Std F77
 XWDRIV 1 /XWINDOW   Workstations running X Window System        C
 XWDRIV 2 /XSERVE    Persistent window on X Window System        C

    Further drivers may be activated but some of them require special prerequisites. See comments in the ''source-code directory'' for details.

  10. Call

    ~/repo/pgplot/pgplot5.2.2/makemake ~/repo/pgplot/pgplot5.2.2 linux gfortran_gcc

    Use different option if required by your system (like gfortran_gcc_64).
    This and the following steps have to be done with the ''installation directory'' being the current working directory! If you miss to do so and for example issue the commands in the ''source-code directory'' the installation apparently will procede, but will be incomplete at the end.

  11. Call make to compile Fortran library.

  12. Edit ~/repo/pgplot/pgplot5.2.2/makehtml to use correct path to perl binary.

  13. Call make pgplot.html compile HTML documentation.

  14. Call make cpg to prepare C bindings.

  15. Call make clean to remove binary object files.

  16. Install library files in place

    /bin/cp -vpd lib* $LOCLIBDIR /bin/cp -vpd cpgplot.h $LOCINCLUDEDIR

  17. Edit ~/.SeitoshBashrc to contain

    export PGPLOT_DIR=$HOME/repo/pgplot/linuxgfortran

    such that PGPLOT_DIR points to your ''installation directory''. See the notes at
    Preparing for installation of binary programs of Seitosh for comments on ~/.SeitoshBashrc.

  • You may use any other path alterantively to ~/repo/pgplot/pgplot5.2.2 for ''source-code directory'' and ~/repo/pgplot/linuxgfortran for the ''installation directory'', respectively. Just adjust all path names in the above commands consistently.
  • For more details see install-unix.txt and other files in the ''source-code directory''.

Environment variables

At least two environment variables (PGPLOT_DIR and TF_LINK_PGPLOT) must be set appropriately to use PGPLOT together with source code from the Seitosh repository. See also README.compile. A template bashrc is provided in SeitoshBashrc.

PGPLOT_DIR

This variable contains the path of the PGPLOT ''installation directory''. This variable is required to pass the location of the binary library to the linker and the location of the pgxwin_server binary executable as well as the location of the font file to the programs at run-time.
See also the last item in the quick installation guide above.

TF_LINK_PGPLOT

This variable is required for all programs making use of graphical output through the PGPLOT library. It is passed to the linker in cases where binaries have to be linked against PGPLOT. Use this variable to pass the location of your X11 libraries as well as the names of additional libraries that might be needed for the PGPLOT drivers in your installation (like libpng.a by adding -lpng for example).
In case you are in doubt regaring additional libraries, the makefile in your PGPLOT installation directory can be helpful. The variable PGPLOT_LIB in the makefile contains settings required in TF_LINK_PGPLOT too. TF_LINK_PGPLOT should additionally contain the X11 library (variable LIBS in the PGPLOT makefile) and the path to your PGPLOT installation directory (as provided by variable PGPLOT_DIR).
Example:

export TF_LINK_PGPLOT="-lpgplot -lX11 -L/usr/X11/lib -L$PGPLOT_DIR"

TF_LINK_FORTRAN

This variable is required when C or C++ programs must be linked against Fortran libraries. It defines the linker option for interlanguage linking. If you use g77, you will have to link against libg2c.a here (use -lg2c then instead of -lgfortran). Since PGPLOT is a Fortran library, this variable is used wherever a C oder C++ program uses PGPLOT.
Example:

export TF_LINK_FORTRAN=-lgfortran

PGPLOT driver configuration

PGPLOT comes with many different drivers to produce graphics on screen or in a file. These drivers can be configured. The collection of drivers is documented at http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/pgplot/devices.html Some general configurations options can be selected through environment variables. Some of these settings are prepared in SeitoshBashrc.

X Window driver

The X window driver can be configured by settings in ~/.Xdefaults. See http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/pgplot/xwdriv.html for details.

Postscript driver

The postscript driver can be configured by setting environment variables. Appropriate settings are prepared in SeitoshBashrc. See http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/pgplot/psdriv.html for details.

PGPLOT_PS_WIDTH (default 7800)

PGPLOT_PS_HEIGHT (default 10500)

PGPLOT_PS_HOFFSET (default 350)

PGPLOT_PS_VOFFSET (default 250)

These variables tell PGPLOT how big an image to produce. The defaults are appropriate for 8.5 x 11-inch paper. The maximum dimensions of a PGPLOT image are WIDTH by HEIGHT, with the lower left corner offset by HOFFSET horizontally and VOFFSET vertically from the lower left corner of the paper. The units are milli-inches. The ``top'' of the paper is the edge that comes out of the printer first.

PGPLOT_IDENT

If this variable is defined (with any value), the user name, date and time are written in the bottom right corner of each page. If you want to get rid of the ident marker in the bottom right corner you have to issue

unset PGPLOT_IDENT

in your shell before prior to calling the plot program.

PGPLOT_PS_BBOX

Normally, PGPLOT computes the bounding box for the entire plot (the smallest rectangle that includes all the graphics) as it creates the PostScript file, and writes this information in a %%BoundingBox comment in the file trailer. Some programs that read encapsulated PostScript files expect to find the %%BoundingBox comment in the file header, not the trailer, and may not display the plot correctly. To fix this problem, you may need to move the comment from the trailer to the header with a text editor or special program. Alternatively, you can define PGPLOT_PS_BBOX = MAX. This tells PGPLOT to put a %%BoundingBox comment in the header of the PostScript file; the bounding box is one which encompasses the whole plottable area, not a minimal one, because PGPLOT does not know the correct bounding box until it has finished writing the file.

PGPLOT_PS_DRAW_BBOX

If this variable is set, the bounding box (the smallest rectangle that includes all the graphics) is drawn on each page.

PGPLOT_PS_VERBOSE_TEXT

If this variable is set, the text of each plotted character string is included in the PostScript file as a comment before the sequence of vectors that represents the string. This makes the file slightly larger, but it can be useful if you want to edit the PostScript file.

PGPLOT_PS_EOF

Normally the output file does not contain special end-of-file characters. But if environment variable PGPLOT_PS_EOF is defined (with any value) PGPLOT writes a control-D job-separator character at the beginning and at the end of the file. This is appropriate for Apple LaserWriters using the serial interface, but it may not be appropriate for other PostScript devices.

PGPLOT_PS_MARKERS

Specify NO to suppress use of a PostScript font for the graph markers; markers are then emulated by line-drawing. If this option is not requested, PGPLOT graph markers are scaled geometrically with the character-height attribute and the line-width attribute is ignored. This is different from most of the other drivers, where the line-width used for markers is set by the line-width attribute rather than the character-height attribute. Requesting this option makes the PostScript driver behave like the other drivers, but it also makes the PostScript files larger.