rchampe@hubcap.clemson.edu (Richard Champeaux) (11/19/89)
PLT: v1.3 has finally been released! After much procrastination on my part, I have finished PLT: v1.3. I will mail it directly to the people to whom we have sent previous versions of PLT: and I will also post it on comp.binaries.amiga. PLT: v1.3 has many improvements over v1.2, and many bugs have been fixed. The most notable of the added features are the support of various page sizes and the support of multiple, disk resident, user modifiable fonts. Below is part of the document file, describing the features of PLT: v1.3 We have put a lot of effort into PLT:, and since we did not write it to make a profit, but merely for an ego boost, we would like to know approximately how many people use (or merely don't throw away) PLT: and what they think about it. It would be appreciated if anyone using PLT: would send such comments to: Rich Champeaux rchampe@hubcap.clemson.edu or Jim Miller jvmiller@rdrc.rpi.edu Thanks. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLT: Version 1.3 November 16, 1989 Rich Champeaux Jim Miller NOTICE: PLT: is not in the public domain. We reserve all rights to both the executable and the source. PLT: may not be sold without expressed, written permission of either Rich Champeaux or Jim Miller. PLT: is however, freely distributable provided that this file accompanies it. PLT: is a handler that emulates a plotter by accepting HP-GL commands, creating a raster image, and then dumping it to any Preferences supported graphics printer. The current resolution set with preferences is used, allowing PLT: to make full use of a printer's capability. PLT: accepts virtually all of the standard HP-GL commands, including scaling and text. The commands that were not implemented are those which are generally contained in an extended graphics cartridge, such as: circles, arcs, filled regions, etc. PLT: Features: - Lines are stored in a tree/linked list structure untill the handler is closed or the command AF or PG is recieved. The plot is then rasterized and dumped to the printer in strips. This allows plots to be printed with resolutions and page sizes for which a raster for the entire page would not fit in memory. - Pens can be assigned colors and thicknesses. The pen colors are defined by RGB values, and thicknesses are defined in pixel widths. The pens can be defined in an environment variable or when the handler is opened. The number of bit planes used for the raster depends on the number of different colors requested, not the number of pens. Therefore, 7 black pens and 5 red pens of various thicknesses, would only take 2 bit planes. - PLT: supports variable paper sizes. It knows the standard paper sizes, A, B, C, D, and E, and can also use the paper size defined by the limits fields of Preference's Graphic 2 screen. The entire width of any dot matrix printer supported by Preferences can be used, including wide carriage printers. If the requested page size is too large to be printed, a requester is displayed, giving the option to reduce the size of the plot (keeping the aspect ratio) to the maximum size of the printer. The plot can also be reduced to the page size specified by Preferences. - PLT: has a preview mode that displays the plot on the screen. The aspect ratio of the requested page is preserved. This allows the plot to be displayed on the screen the way it will appear on paper. A 640 x 400 screen is used to provide maximum resolution. - PLT: v1.3 supports multiple, disk-resident fonts. The fonts can be changed or created by the user. An included program, 'cf', is used to convert the fonts from a text representation of the vectors to a format usable by PLT:. Fonts are loaded in only when needed, and fonts can be changed durring a plot with the CS, CA, SS, and SA HP-GL commands. A standard ascii font and a math-greek font are included with this release. - PLT: can also be used by programs that assume that a plotter is connected to the serial port by using the CMD command. For example: CMD serial.device PLT: - PLT: has two memory usage modes that it can run in: memory-squander and memory-conserve. The memory-squander mode sits a tree structure on top of the linked list to speed up inserts. The memory-conserve mode uses only a linked list. The memory-squander mode is much faster than the memory-conserve mode since it's insert time is O(log2(n)), but it requires twice as much memory per line. The memory-conserve mode's insert time is O(n), and becomes unbearably slow as the number of lines becomes greater than about 8000. The memory-conserve mode does, however, allow twice as many lines to be plotted. PLT: v1.3 defaults to the memory-squander mode and will automatically remove the tree and switch to the memory-conserve mode when availble memory is less than 2k. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rich Champeaux (rchampe@hubcap.clemson.edu)