PDL::Graphics::PLplot This is a simple perl/PDL interface to the PLplot plotting library. http://plplot.sourceforge.net/ I wrote this primarily for web graphics as an alternative to PDL::Graphics::PGPLOT. The advantages of PLplot over PGPLOT are these: -- It is written all in (generally well structured, comprehensible) C (so you don't need a FORTRAN compiler as for PGPLOT). -- It is in current development -- It has a simple autoconf installation with built-in PNG support (The disadvantage is that it is missing some of PGPLOT's many features). The interface consists of two levels. A low level interface which maps closely to the PLplot C interface, and a high level, object-oriented interface which is easier to use. Examples: use PDL: use PDL::Graphics::PLplot; # Line plot of two 1D PDLs $x and $y my $pl = PDL::Graphics::PLplot->new (DEV => "png", FILE => "test1.png"); $pl->xyplot($x, $y, PLOTTYPE => 'LINE', COLOR => 'GREEN', TITLE => 'Sample plot', XLAB => 'frobnitz', YLAB => 'widgets/sec'); $pl->close; # Shade plot of a 2D PDL in $z my $pl = PDL::Graphics::PLplot->new (DEV => 'png', FILE => "test2.png"); $pl->shadeplot ($z, $nsteps, BOX => [-1, 1, -1, 1], PALETTE => 'RAINBOW'); $pl->colorkey ($z, 'v', VIEWPORT => [0.93, 0.96, 0.15, 0.85]); $pl->close; For more examples, see the test suite in t/plplot.t. PREREQUISITES: perl 5.8 or higher PDL 2.3 or more recent PLplot 5.1.0 or later. Last tested with version 5.9.7 SVN (4/29/2011). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Important: plplot *must* be compiled --with-double so that all floating point numbers used are doubles. Install plplot similar to this: # ./configure --with-double # make # make install On some systems (IRIX, for one) it may be necessary to compile plplot without fortran support: --disable-f77. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INSTALLATION: Installation should be the normal: perl Makefile.PL make make test (as root) make install Best of luck! Doug Hunt dhunt@ucar.edu Software Engineer III UCAR - GPS/MET