This is the distribution for PLplot, a scientific plotting package.
PLplot is relatively small, portable, freely distributable, and is rich
enough to satisfy most users.  It has a wide range of plot types including
line (linear, log), contour, 3D, fill, and almost 1000 characters
(including Greek and mathematical) in its extended font set.  The package
is designed to make it easy to quickly get graphical output; only a
handful of function calls is typically required.  For more advanced use,
virtually all aspects of plotting are configurable.

The PLplot package is distributable under the terms of the GNU Library
General Public License (LGPL) with some exceptions -- see the file
"Copyright" for full information.  The intent here is to ensure that
PLplot continues to evolve in a positive way, while remaining freely
distributable.  Placing the library under the LGPL enables software
developers to use the PLplot library as an integral part of their product,
even a commercial product.

We welcome suggestions on how to improve this code, especially in the form of
user-contributed enhancements or bug fixes.  If PLplot is used in any
published papers, please include an acknowledgment or citation of our work,
which will help us to continue improving PLplot.  Also, please remember that
as PLplot is not a commercial product, we cannot be expected to offer the
kind of support that a commercial product may.  There is great interest
in extending PLplot and fixing bugs, but the principal authors can only
afford to work on it part time.  Improvements will necessarily focus on
those which help us get our work done.

PLplot is written in C, enabling it to run on many platforms practically
without modification.  Fortran programs may use it transparently; stub
routines are provided to handle the C<->Fortran interface without any
modification of the user program.  C programs are required to include the
header file "plplot.h"; see the documentation for more details.

The main documentation for PLplot is in the doc/ directory in the form of
several TeX files; please consult this for additional information ("latex
plotdoc").  Unfortunately documentation tends to lag actual improvements to
the code, so don't be surprised if some known features are not explained
there.  Consult "NEWS" to see a list of recent changes.  

At present, PLplot is believed to work on the following systems:

	Unix:	AIX 		(IBM)
		ConvexOS	(Convex)
		DG/UX		(Data General)
		HP-UX		(Hewlett-Packard)
		IRIX		(Silicon Graphics)
		Linux		(various)
		OSF/1		(DEC)
		SunOS		(Sun)
		Super-UX	(NEC)
		SysV		(various)
		Ultrix		(DEC)
		Unicos		(Cray)

	Amiga/Exec
	MS-DOS
	OS/2
	NeXT
	VMS

Many different output device drivers are available, including postscript,
tektronix, HP laserjet, HP pen plotters, XFig, xterm, X-windows, and a
portable metafile format, among others.  The Tk driver under Unix/X
provides a full user interface based on the plframe plotting widget (see
below).  The Tcl-DP based driver is a variant of the Tk driver that
supports distributed rendering.  The metafile renderer (plrender) supports
all of the standard operations as well as seeking operations (backward,
forward, or to any specified page) when interactively viewing metafile
output.

Part of the PLplot package is a Tcl-based interpreter (pltcl).  This
program allows interactive plotting using the Tcl script language with
plotting extensions.  Currently about half of the PLplot library functions
are recognized from the Tcl side, with more to follow.

Also part of PLplot is a Tk-based plotting widget, called a plframe.  This
widget is based on the Tk frame widget, and supports a variety of user
options such as zoom, scrolls, save to a variety of devices, print,
resize, page layout, orientation change, and palette manipulation.  Direct
plotting to the widget may be done by calls to the underlying library
using either C or Fortran bindings, and a large number of operations can
be interpreted directly (in Tcl) by the widget.

For more information on how to get or use PLplot on your system, see:
 - appendices to the PLplot manual
 - system-specific documentation in the appropriate sys/<system> directory.

To become a subscriber to the PLplot mailing list, send a message to
plplot-request@dino.ph.utexas.edu containing the single line "subscribe" in
the message body (the subject is ignored).  You can send messages to the
list by mailing to plplot@dino.ph.utexas.edu.

PLplot is available by anonymous ftp from dino.ph.utexas.edu in the
plplot/ directory.


CREDITS
-------

PLplot is the result of the effort of many people, so it is impractical to
list all the contributors.  Those currently supporting and otherwise
responsible for the package in its present form include:

Dr. Maurice LeBrun			PLplot overall coordination, kernel
mjl@dino.ph.utexas.edu			development, most of the Unix and Amiga
Institute for Fusion Studies		drivers, plframe widget and pltcl
University of Texas

Geoffrey Furnish			Co-developer.  Can help with C++ and
furnish@dino.ph.utexas.edu		UNIX related questions
Institute for Fusion Studies
University of Texas

Paul Casteels				DOS/BGI (bcc) port
casteels@uia.ac.be
University of Antwerp

John C. Peterson			OS/2 port 
jcp@trg.saic.com
Science Applications Intl Corp

Paul Kirschner				DOS/DJGPP port
pek@logos.res.utc.com
United Technologies Research Center

Hiromi Kimura				VMS port
hiromi@tac.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba
