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This prefab reads and executes sets of commands which specify low-level drawing operations.
See the Discussion below for usage example.
The commands may be one of two distinct types:
a. a ploticus drawdump file (created via pl -drawdump)
Often used with prefabs as a way to overlay or combine graphs.
b. ploticus draw commands - a set of commands as described below for creating
lines, polygons, and text, in either absolute space
or scaled space. May be useful as a flexible way to add annotation,
or to add graphics that the other plotting procedures cannot produce,
or to import graphics generated programatically.
If you use the dumpfile attribute, drawdump content is expected.
Otherwise, ploticus draw commands are expected.
Parameters
If using dumpfile, none of the standard prefab parameters are applicable.
If you're processing ploticus draw commands, and are using commands that operate in
scaled space, the following
standard prefab parameters
apply: rectangle, xrange, and yrange.
dumpfile
filename
a drawdump file as created previously using pl -drawdump or pl -drawdumpa
Example: dumpfile=dump1
cmdfile
filename
the name of a file containing
ploticus draw commands
, one per line.
You can also use stdin for draw commands to be read from standard input.
Discussion
It's possibile to overlay/combine plots from multiple pl prefab runs
using the -drawdump and -drawdumpa command line options
to overlay and/or combine plots from multiple pl runs into one graphic image / result.
For example
,IP
pl -prefab scat "rectangle= 1 1 3 3" .... -drawdump mydump <br>
pl -prefab scat "rectangle= 4 1 6 3" .... -drawdumpa mydump <br>
pl -prefab draw dumpfile=mydump -png -o all.png
Hints:
If you're setting a background color this should be done only in the first pl invocation.
For overlays using the same plotting area rectangle and scaling, turn off axis generation (xaxis=none yaxis=none).
For overlays using same plotting area rectangle and different scaling, use eg. yaxis=left for one and yaxis=right for the other.
Clickmap/mouseover info is not retained in drawdump file, but can be generated by individual pl invocation for PNG (etc.)
You can get a graphic result while generating a drawdump.. just specify the device argument somewhere to the right of
the -drawdump <i>filename</i> argument on the command line.
Example
pl -prefab draw cmdfile=drawcom.dcm xrange="0 40" yrange="0 40" \\
rectangle="1 1 3 3"
The drawcom.dcm file begins like this:
movs 3.5 23
lins 3.5 22
lins 3 21.6