User documentation for NCAR Graphics Low Level Utilities

To use traditional NCAR Graphics (the Low Level Utilities), you write a Fortran or C program to call NCAR Graphics routines that produce visual representations of your data. Traditional NCAR Graphics is thoroughly documented in:

• The introductory user guide to the Ngmath library
  
• The introductory user guide NCAR Graphics Fundamentals
  
• The training manual NCAR Graphics Contouring and Mapping Tutorial
  
• The NCAR Graphics GKS manual User's Guide for NCAR GKS-0A Graphics
  
• The full set of NCAR Graphics man pages
  
• Examples that show NCAR Graphics capabilities and help you to understand and use the code that produces the examples
  
• Programmer documents for each Low Level Utility, written by the software developers. Note: some of these programmer documents are currently only available in PostScript format.
  
  • Areas, A Package that Solves Certain Practical Problems in Topology
    
  • Autograph, A Package of Routines to Draw X/Y Plots
    
  • CGM, Graphcap, and Fontcap Supplement
    
  • Conpack, A Contouring Package
    
  • Dashpack, A Software Package for Drawing Dashed Lines
    
  • Ezmap, A Map-Drawing Package
    
  • Gflash, A Graphics Instruction Manipulation Package
    
  • Gridal, A Package to Draw Backgrounds for X/Y Plots
    
  • Isosurface, A Package of Routines used to Draw Isosurfaces
    
  • Labelbar, A Package of Routines to Draw Labelled Bars
    
  • Plotchar, A Character-Plotting Package
    
  • Polypack, A Package of Routines to Manipulate Polygons
    
  • Stitle, A Package to Create Scrolled Movie Titles
    
  • Seter, A Centralized Error-Handling Package for NCAR Graphics
    
  • Softfill, A Software Fill Package
    
  • Streamlines, A Field Flow Visualization Utility
    
  • Tdpack, A Three-Dimensional Plotting Utility
    
  • Vectors, A Vector Field Plotting Utility
    
  • Wmap, A Package for Producing Daily Weather Maps and Plotting Station Model Data
    

NCAR Graphics Fundamentals contains important information for all users of traditional NCAR Graphics: a glossary of terms, explanation of the structure of NCAR Graphics programs, strategies for learning to use NCAR Graphics, instructions for compiling, linking, and running programs, instructions for producing and editing output from NCAR Graphics programs, and guidelines for using the utilities. It introduces the Fortran interface to all of the traditional NCAR Graphics utilities except for Areas, Ezmap, and Conpack, which are explained in full detail in the hardcopy manual NCAR Graphics Contouring and Mapping Tutorial.

The NCAR Graphics Contouring and Mapping Tutorial is a learning tool for beginning and intermediate users of the Fortran interface to NCAR Graphics. It gives examples and describes how to use all routines in the Areas, Ezmap, and Conpack utilities. Users combine these routines to prepare NCAR Graphics programs that fill areas, draw maps, and contour data fields.

The online man pages provide concise reference information for all user entry points, user-modifiable internal routines, parameters used in all utilities, and NCAR Graphics commands such as ncargex. The overview man page ncargintro introduces all utilities in the package, and overview man pages for each utility introduce all routines in that utility. The man pages should be installed on all systems that runNCAR Graphics software.

Programmer documents are the software developers' reference notes; they are provided for users who want to explore the information that developers use to maintain a utility's source code. They can also be very helpful to users.

The ncargex command allows you to access more than 250 examples, and all of them are internally documented with comments. A brief introduction to ncargex is provided in the Tutorial module Intro 1.2 "Details about how information is presented in this manual,"and procedures for using ncargex appear in the Fundamentals " Chapter 2: Five quick steps for creating and viewing your plot." A pictorial index to all NCAR graphics examples is provided as Appendix D of Fundamentals; this pictorial index appears only in the hardcopy version of the manual, and the hardcopy manual is likely to become unavailable sometime during 1995. While supplies of the printed manuals last, one copy each of Fundamentals and Tutorial is shipped to sites that order any version of NCAR Graphics at Version 3.2 or later.

Additional special-purpose user documents are available via anonymous FTP to ftp.ucar.edu; see the ncarg directory. These documents include guides to producing films and videos using NCAR facilities and a reference guide to the NCAR CGM format. The complete list of these special-purpose documents appears in the online NCAR Graphics order form

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