18: Customizing Your Account

16.C: Programming Courtesy

There are several kinds of graphical tools you may need. To draw color pictures, you may wish to use a microcomputer (i.e. a Macintosh or PC) and use Fetch, ftp or diskettes to transfer your files. To draw figures on a Unix machine xfig is recommended. It is a window and mouse driven drawing program similar to those you may have seen on a Macintosh or PC. To start xfig simply type xfig on the command line.
> xfig

To modify existing pictures (cropping, colors etc.) the program xv is recommended. It is also a mouse and window based program and is straightforward to use. One of your first uses might be to crop your photo for your home page. There are computer mounted camera's available in the department so you can take your picture. Or you can use a scanner at the library computer lab to create a file from an existing picture. Tutors are available at the library to help you use the scanner. To start xv simply type xv followed by the file name you wish to modify on the command line.
> xv filename

To graph two dimensional data, the free software xmgr is recommended. It is a fairly easy to use graphical program which creates publication quality graphs. It also has several convienent tools such as automatic Fourier transform calculations. To start xmgrmgr simply type xmgr followed by the name of the file which contains your data.
> xmgr filename

Since xmgr cannot plot three dimensional data the program gnuplot is recommended for three dimensional plotting. Instructions for using gnuplot are in the guide below.

The on-line guide Visualization Of Scientific Data has instructions and example for using xmgr, gnuplot and animation.

18: Customizing Your Account

16.C: Programming Courtesy