Organization of this Manual
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## Organization of this Manual

The PLplot library has been designed so that it is easy to write programs producing graphical output without having to set up large numbers of parameters. However, more precise control of the results may be necessary, and these are accommodated by providing lower-level routines which change the system defaults. The manual first describes the overall process of producing a graph using the high-level routines (see the section called “Plotting a Simple Graph”). For a discussion of the underlying concepts of the plotting process and an introduction to some of the more complex routines (see Chapter 3, Advanced Use of PLplot). An alphabetical list of the user-accessible PLplot functions with detailed descriptions is given in the reference section of the manual (see Chapter 18, The Common API for PLplot).

Because the PLplot kernel is written in C, standard C syntax is used in the description of each PLplot function. If you have difficulty interpreting the call syntax as described in this manual, please refer to part III, Language Bindings. This manual includes: C (Chapter 8, C Language), C++ (Chapter 9, A C++ Interface for PLplot), Fortran 95 (Chapter 10, Fortran 95 Language), Java (???), Tcl (Chapter 14, Using PLplot from Tcl), Perl (Chapter 12, Using PLplot from Perl) and Python (Chapter 13, Using PLplot from Python). Since PLplot has a long history, bindings to your language of choice are probably available though not necessarily in the PLplot distribution. It is a good idea to ask around and do a quick search before rolling your own.

The meaning of the function (subroutine) arguments is typically the same regardless of what language you are using to call PLplot (but there are some exceptions to this). The arguments for each function are usually specified in terms of PLBOOL, PLINT,and PLFLT—these are the internal PLplot representations for logical, integer, and floating point, and are typically a zero (false) or non-zero (true) contained in a long, a long, and a float (or a LOGICAL, INTEGER, and a REAL, for Fortran programmers). See Chapter 8, C Language for more detail.

Most of the output devices supported by PLplot are listed in Chapter 5, The PLplot Display Driver Family and Chapter 6, The PLplot Output Driver Family, along with description of the device driver--PLplot interface, metafile output, family files, and vt100/tek4010 emulators.

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