1.3 About This Manual

This manual is part of a series of manuals documenting the Python Graphics Interface (PyGraph). They are:

· I. EZPLOT User Manual

· II. Object-Oriented Graphics Manual

· III. Plotter Objects Manual

· IV. Python Gist Graphics Manual

· V. Python Narcisse Graphics Manual

EZPLOT is a command-line oriented interface that is very similar to the EZN graphics package in Basis. The Object-Oriented Graphics Manual provides a higher-level interface to PyGraph. The remaining manuals give low-level plotting details that should be of interest only to computer scientists developing new user-level plot commands, or to power users desiring more precise control over their graphics or wanting to do exotic things such as opening a graphics window on a remote machine.

PyGraph is available on Sun (both SunOS and Solaris), Hewlett-Packard, DEC, SGI workstations, and some other platforms. Currently at LLNL, Narcisse is installed only on the X Division HP and Solaris boxes, however, and Narcisse is not available for distribution outside this laboratory. Our French colleagues are going through the necessary procedures for public release, but these have not yet been crowned with success. Gist, however, is publicly available as part of the Yorick release, and may be obtained by anonymous ftp from ftp-icf.llnl.gov; look in the subdirectory /ftp/pub/Yorick.

A great many people have helped create PyGraph and its documentation. These include

• Lee Busby of LLNL, who wrote gistCmodule, and wrought the necessary changes in the Python kernel to allow it to work correctly;
• Zane Motteler of LLNL, who wrote narcissemodule, ezplot, the OOG, and some other auxiliary routines, and who wrote much of the documentation, at least the part that was not blatantly stolen from David Munro and Steve Langer (see below);
• Paul Dubois of LLNL, who wrote the PDB and Ranf modules, and who worked with Konrad Hinsen (Laboratoire de Dynamique Moleculaire, Institut de Biologie Structurale, Grenoble, France) and James Hugunin (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) on NumPy, the numeric extension to Python, without which this work could not have been done;
• Fred Fritsch of LLNL, who produced the templates and did some of the writing of this documentation;
• Our French collaborators at the Centre D'Etudes de Limeil-Valenton (CEL-V), Commissariat A L'Energie Atomique, Villeneuve-St-Georges, France, among whom are Didier Courtaud, Jean-Philippe Nomine, Pierre Brochard, Jean-Bernard Weill, and others;
• David Munro of LLNL, the man behind Yorick and Gist, and Steve Langer of LLNL, who collaborated with him on the 3-D interpreted graphics in Yorick. We have also shamelessly stolen from their Gist documentation; however, any inaccuracies which crept in during the transmission remain the authors' responsibility.

  The authors of this manual stand as representative of their efforts and those of a much larger number of minor contributors.

  Send any comments about these documents to ``support@icf.llnl.gov'' on the Internet or to ``support'' on Lasnet.