MULTIPLOT XLN This is program placed in the Public Domain for free use WITH THE SPECIFIC EXCEPTION OF REDISTRIBUTION FOR PROFIT. November 1989 Walter & Eliza Hall Institute, c/o PostOffice, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville 3053. VICTORIA This is the first release of Multiplot XLN. It is expected to receive distribution via Fred Fish. If you notice any repeatable bugs or have any suggestions for improvement of enhancement, please send them to me at the address below. This release includes the Plt: device. The inclusion of this program does not in any way effect or imply distribution conditions. The distribution conditions of the Plt: device are described in the file Plt.doc. HISTORY Multiplot was originally written by Tim Mooney as a plotting utility for use with mCAD, his freeware CAD program. It supported a flexible input textfile format, many plotting options, and HPLG plotter output. It was not an intuitive program, and its full power was difficult to realise. It was also very limited in output formats and had no support for printers. Some of these problems were addressed in PLOT, an intuition interface which created an environment from which Multiplot and a collection on conversion files could be called. However the major problem of a non-intuitive way of selecting plotting options remained (the "get how to" window), and it was not possible to print output from within the program. Multiplot XLN resolves these problems. SUMMARY Multiplot XLN is a fully intuitive data plotting program. It plots data points as (x,y) coordinates with or without error bars. It can plot multiplot sets of data points using colour or point size to represent the deferent sets. A set may be joined by a line or plotted as discrete points. The input file for multiplot is a simple textfile and my be created in the NotePad. Output may be in any of the following formats: IntroCAD, Draw, mCAD, IFF, HPLG. The graph can be printed to any workbench printer by transparent use of the PLT: device. REQUIREMENTS Workbench 1.3 (or higher) and maths libraries, the PLT: device (plt-handler in l: and the mountlist for plt added to the devs: mountlist), at least 1Mb RAM. The files Multiplot, txt_2_icad and plot2draw must be kept together in the same directory. Text on screen currently uses Times.font sizes 14 and 24 point. If these fonts are absent, the default font will be used. INPUT FILE FORMAT Multiplot accepts a simple ascii file for input of data. The data must consist of columns of numbers. Text heading the file will be ignored with the exception of lines beginning with: *TITLE* Text will be used for a title. *XLABEL* Text will be used for a label on X axis. *YLABEL* Text will be used for a label on Y axis. Blank lines or lines of text interrupting the columns of numbers are interpreted as separating sets of data, and each set will be plotted individually in, for example, a different colour or point size. See plotme.dat or eric for examples of input file format. STARTING OUT From the CLI: > multiplot [filename] Type multiplot with or without the filename of the input data file. If a '?' is used as an argument, a simple description of usage is given. From the Workbench: Double click on the Multiplot icon OR Edit your input file in a simple editor (NotePad will do fine), and save with an icon. You can then change the file's default tool (INFO from the lefthand Workbench menu) to Multiplot:Multiplot or whatever the file path is. Multiplot will then be automatically invoked when the file is double clicked. An alternative to this is to not change the file's default tool, but to click on the file to highlight it hold the shift key down, and then double click on the Multiplot icon. It doesn't matter if you get them around the wrong way. THE DATA SELECTION WINDOW After being started, Multiplot tries to work out whether it is on a PAL or NTSC machine, and opens a screen of the appropriate size. The next thing you see is the DATA SELECTION WINDOW. If you started Multiplot by telling it what file you wanted to plot, the file's name will be in a little box. Sometimes if the name is very long, the box is empty. Don't worry, Multiplot still knows what you want. If you started Multiplot without telling it what file you want, the default file name will appear in the box. The PATH button will call up a file requester to help with browsing directory trees looking for wanted data files. Beneath the file selection box are three other boxes to indicate what column the X, Y and Error values are in. A '0' indicates values are absent. For example if the Error box has a '0', no error bars will be plotted. If the X box has a '0', unit increases in the X values will be assumed. When satisfied with the file and column specification, hit the return key or click on the Continue=> arrow. THE HOW TO PLOT WINDOW The HOW TO PLOT window is the first level of choosing plot options. In this window you may turn the error bars on (if available) or off, turn a cross grid on of off, and choose the number of tic marks along the X and Y axes. You can also choose to have the data plotted in either default points (all sets plotted as points, each in a different colour) or lines. If you wish to specify plotting options for each data set individually, click off the default plot. Hit the Continue=> button when happy with you selections. If a default plot was chosen, you will pass straight to the screen plot. If not the next window is the CUSTOM PLOT window. THE CUSTOM PLOT WINDOW This is the next level in choosing plot options. For each data set for plotting, this window will appear to allow you to select plot colours, whether line or point, and if point, point size. For example, in the example plot supplied, the first four data sets are raw experimental results. The next four data sets are the curve fits provided by another program. In this case, it is appropriate to plot the first four data sets as points with error bars, with each data set in a different colour. This is achieved by leaving the DEFAULT selector ON, an clicking the LINE/POINT selector to point. Click on the Continue=> button four times to accept point plots with cycling colours. For the fifth data set, change the default selector to OFF, choose colour '8' (grey) and change the LINE/POINT selector to LINE. Accept this choice for the remaining four data sets by clicking on the Continue=> button four times. The plot will now be rendered on the screen. THE PLOT WINDOW The PLOT window fills the entire high resolution screen and contains a hand crafted menu for your computing pleasure. The menus available are PROJECT which relates to the loading, saving and printing or plots, EDIT which allows modification of the plot, resizing, shifting and zoom, and the OPTIONS menu which changes the boarder colour, turns the axes, grid and cross hair on or off and returns you to the HOW TO PLOT window. The major menu items are described below. NEW Returns you to the DATA SELECTION window for loading a new file. You will NOT be prompted by a requester asking if you really REALLY want to restart. This is because 1) You almost certainly do. and 2) You don't actually loose very much even if you didn't. SAVE Plots may be saved in any of the following formats: IFF (loads into DPaint), Draw (loads into Draw2000 etc), IntroCAD (an excellent CAD program), mCAD (a PD CAD program), and HPLG plotter language. Please note the following restrictions: Currently Draw, IntroCAD, and mCAD saves do not include the numbers or labels on axes. You will need to jot these down when saving in these formats. A Draw save does not include information for the colours. Data is saved in a single colour. Draw saves require the program Plot2Draw to be in the same directory as Multiplot. IntroCAD saves require the program Txt_2_Icad to be in the same directory as Multiplot. Hopefully, some of these restrictions will be addressed in later releases of Multiplot. Please Note: # Neither Professional Page nor PageStream handle Draw files with large dimensions very well. If your dimensions are greater than 200 units, these programs often scramble the data. Rescale your data to keep within these limits if you wish to import to either of these programs. PRINT Printing is achieved via the transparent use of the PLT: device. The plt-handler must be in your l: directory, and the PLT: mountlist must be added to your DEVS:mountlist. You do not need to mount the device. Multiplot will mount PLT: automatically if it is not already mounted. Currently printed copy does not include labels on the axes, but does include values. QUIT Quit does the obvious, with the same restrictions noted in the section on NEW. ZOOM Allows closeup views of areas of the data. Overzealous use results in an interesting red and black logo at the top of the screen. It is safe if you are sensible. LOCKS Allows either the X or Y dimension to be frozen while the other is zoomed or rescaled. very useful when used in conjunction with the other items in this menu (Zoom, Slide, FullPlot). OPTIONS Best left to exploration. THE FUTURE Probable enhancements to come are: coloured colour selecter, example point sizes in the point selecter, user definable on screen fonts, printed and saved output of screen text, colour for Draw saves and bar graphs. Suggestions welcomed. CONCLUSION Multiplot is the first intuitive Data plotting program for the Amiga. It allows extremely rapid visualisation of experimental data with a wide selection of output formats. It does a simple job, but does it well. If you have suggestions, questions, bug finds or are just feeling lonely (!), please write: Dr Alan G Baxter, Walter & Eliza Hall Institute, c/o Post Office, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville 3053, AUSTRALIA Thanks to Tim Mooney for the great code, and Graeme Riddle for testing.