2.1 PyGist 2-D Graphics

In two dimensions, PyGist supplies functions to plot curves, meshes (with various combinations of contours, filled mesh cells, and vector fields on the mesh, with color-filled contours in the future), sets of filled polygons, cell arrays, sets of disjoint lines, text strings, and a title. These are all provided by the Python module gist.py.

We will show a couple of simple examples below to give the reader a flavor of the interface.

Example 1

In the first example we simply plot a straight line from (1, 0) to (2, 1). Note that only two coordinates are specified for y; x is not specified. In such a case, the values of x default to the integers from 1 to len (y).

from gist import * # Put plot functions in name space.

pldefault (marks = 1, width = 0, type = 1, style = "work.gs",

dpi = 100) # Set some defaults.

winkill (0) # Kill any existing window.

window (0, wait = 1, dpi = 75)

plg ( [0, 1]) # The first positional argument is y.

As can be deduced from this example, most PyGist function calls can be augmented with a number of optional keyword arguments. These can (usually) be supplied in any order, and each is of the form keyword=value. Throughout this manual, a list of the available keywords for a function is given with the description of the function.

Example 2

The next example computes and plots a set of nested cardioids in the primary and secondary colors.

fma()

x = 2 * pi * arange (200, typecode = Float) / 199.0

for i in range (1, 7):

r = 0.5 * i - (5 - 0.5 * i) * cos (x)

s = 'curve ' + \Qi\Q #Backticks produce something printable.

plg (r * sin (x), r * cos (x), marks = 0, color = - 4 - i,

legend = s) # Curves unmarked, in colors.

# (See next page.)