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From: Jerry <lanceboyle@qwest.net>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: ANN: Ada bindings to PLplot plotting software
Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2009 15:31:10 -0800 (PST)
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Date: 2009-01-02T15:31:10-08:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

This is to announce the official availability of the Ada language
bindings to the plotting package PLplot as of version 5.9.1. See the
home page at http://plplot.sourceforge.net/. Available unofficially
for some time, the Ada bindings are now enabled by default.

PLplot is an actively developed project at SourceForge and should be
considered for high quality publication-grade plotting. It is a
linkable library and thus potentially faster than some other packages,
not requiring writing data to a file before plotting.

>From the PLplot home page:
"PLplot is a cross-platform software package for creating scientific
plots. To help accomplish that task it is organized as a core C
library, language bindings for that library, and device drivers which
control how the plots are presented in non-interactive and interactive
plotting contexts."

"The PLplot core library can be used to create standard x-y plots,
semi-log plots, log-log plots, contour plots, 3D surface plots, mesh
plots, bar charts and pie charts. Multiple graphs (of the same or
different sizes) may be placed on a single page, and multiple pages
are allowed for those device formats that support them."

The Ada bindings offer a number of substantial improvements over the C
API, including a choice of binding, one using "traditional" PLplot
names such as plcol0(1) to set the pen color to red, the other using
"Ada-friendly" names such as Set_Color(Red).

The Ada bindings are extended to offer a host of "simple plotters"
that do not require user set-up and will suffice for many day-to-day
plotting needs. Here is an example:

  with
      PLplot_Auxiliary,
      PLplot;
  use
      PLplot_Auxiliary,
      PLplot;

  procedure Simple_Example is
      x, y : Real_Vector(-10 .. 10);
  begin
      for i in x'range loop
          x(i) := Long_Float(i);
          y(i) := x(i)**2;
      end loop;

      Initialize_PLplot; -- Call this only once.
      Simple_Plot(x, y); -- Make the plot.
      End_PLplot;        -- Call this only once.
  end Simple_Example;

There is also extensive Ada-specific documentation.


Platforms Supported:
  Linux, Mac OS X, and other Unices
  Windows (2000, XP and Vista)
  MS-DOS (DJGPP)

Output File Formats:
  CGM
  GIF
  JPEG
  LaTeX
  PBM
  PDF
  PNG
  PostScript
  SVG
  Xfig

Interactive Platforms:
  X
  GNOME
  Tcl/Tk
  PyQt
  wxWidgets

Language Bindings:
  Ada
  C/C++/D
  Fortran 77/90
  Java
  OCaml
  Octave
  Perl
  Python
  Tcl/Tk
  wxWidgets


Jerry Bauck