tridens -- create density plots on a triangular or square lattice in postscript or pdf format.
usage: tridens [options] [infilename1, infilename2 ...]
tridens reads data from the input files specified on command line and, for each one, writes color or grayscale density plots. The input data is on a triangular lattice (or, optionally, a square lattice.) For the triangular(square) lattice, each coordinate pair in the input file is covered with a hexagon(square). The output file format is PostScript or PDF. tridens also operates in an interactive mode.
tridens data.dat -- write a density plot data.dat.pdf of a regular square
(or rectangular) array of data points from a file with lines of the form
'x y val'.
tridens -i data.dat -- write a density plot and display the result in the
pdf viewer and enter interactive mode.
tridens -tri data.dat -- write a density plot data.dat.pdf of data on a triangular
lattice from a file with lines of the form 'x y val', where at least one of the nearest
neighbors to the first point is present. (There can be 'holes' or missing points in the
remainder of the data set.)
Most plotting options, (axes, labels, etc.) are controlled through command line options or interactively, more are available by setting parameters in a parameter file. Command line options override settings in the parameter file. If you need to set more options than are available on the command line (or prefer to use a configuration file) type
tridens -paramfile
to generate the file .tridens with the default parameters in the current directory. Then edit this file to suit your needs. It will be read each time tridens is run. This parameter file is moderately well commented. Any parameters that are deleted from or 'commented out' of .tridens will be determined by the built-in defaults. If you copy .tridens to infilename.p and edit the result, then, only when processing data file infile, the file infilename.p will be read after .tridens and any parameters present will override previously set values. There is a copy of .tridens inside the tridens executable program, which is a plain text file. If you edit these internal parameters, then they become the default parameters. In summary parameters are set in this order: 1) internal (default) parameters, 2) parameters in .tridens, 3) parameters in infilename.p, 4) parameters given on the command line. 5) parameters set interactively. In this list, settings with higher numbers override settings with lower numbers.
Interactive mode is entered by either omitting a data filename on the command line or giving the option -i. Here is an example:
myshellprompt > tridens -i -o sq.pdf sq1.dat tridens> plot tridens> set -title 'This is the title' tridens> plot tridens> plot 'other.dat'
In the example, the plot is drawn twice, adding a title the second time. Then, data from a second data file is plotted. If Term::Readline is installed on your system (It is available as a package in all linux distributions.) the you can use command history and tab completion. Try tab completion in various contexts. (In particular, this document may be out of date, and tab completion can show available commands or arguments.) The following lists commands recognized in the interactive mode.
Print command line options
Print brief help on a topic. Hit TAB twice to see list of topics (if perl-gnu readline is installed). The content of brief help is taken from the man and html pages.
View long documentation as unix man page.
Print documentation to tridens.html and try to open it in a browser (firefox by default)
write (or rewrites) the output plot file. If FILENAME is given as an argument (in single quotes) then the data is read (or reread) from the file. If there is no argument, then the most recently read data is used. If you have set the option -dis then tridens will try to display the plot immediately in a viewer (which can be configured to be xpdf or ghostview.)
Reread the data from the most recently read input data file and replot the data. If an argument is given, data is instead read from the file named in the argument. This is equivalent to using 'read' and then 'plot'.
Set the value of an option (or options). If the option is boolean then VALUE
must be omitted.
In interactive mode, boolean options are set with set and unset with unset.
When starting tridens from the command line
boolean options are unset by prefixing the option name with 'no'.
For example: set cmgray title 'title of plot', sets the title and sets grayscale
mode.
On the commadline -nokey supresses drawing the color key, while in interactive mode
this is done with unset key. The leading '-' can
be omitted from the first option to be set. For example set xmin 0 to set the lower
limit of the x-axis to 0. You may also put an '=' between the option and the value.
see set.
Display the value variables set by an option (or options) You can omit the leading dash '-' on the option when using show. For example if the color map is set to 'cmhue' rather than 'cmgray':
tridens> show cmgray title ColorMap = hue Title = ''
print all plot parameter values preceded by a list of command line switches that can be used to set them. This list of options is printed because more than one option may set the same variable, eg, -axis and -noaxis. The optional argument PATTERN causes fshow to print only those parameters matching the argument. (The pattern is typically a string, but it can be a perl regular expression.) Currently, they are shown in alphabetical order, which is not so useful. For example 'fshow axis' prints all parameters or options containing the string 'axis'.
Launch a viewer that displays the plot. Useful for instance to relaunch the viewer if it is killed or crashes. (But this should happen automatically in most cases.)
Write example plot number N and display it in the viewer.
Display demonstration plots in the viewer.
Reads the data from the file, that can then be plotted with 'plot'. Use this to force rereading of data file. You can also use "plot 'filename'", but it will not re-read the data.
Save the current plotting options to the file configfile or 'save.tridens' if configfile is omitted. There is no 'save' command for the plot itself, as it always written to a file.
Load saved plotting options from the file configfile or 'save.tridens' if configfile is omitted.
These are commands corresponding to the commandline options of the same names described below.
quit interactive mode and exit tridens
All commands above may be abbreviated. Although not normally useful, typing the name of a 'variable' prints its value, with the variable as it appears in the configuration file .tridens (described below) except that it is prepended with Tridens::, eg $Tridens::Title. To change plot parameters you may use set as in the example above. Although usually not necessary, you may also use the variables as they appear in the file .tridens, again with the prefix. For example $Tridens::Title = 'title of plot'. Note that all variables begin with a dollar sign, as in the perl language.
If possible a viewer is started to monitor the output file and update upon replotting. The default viewer is xpdf which is set in the configuration file .tridens (see below).
With the addition of recognizing a few commands, the
interactive mode is executing your input as perl code. So
you can enter things like 1+1 and sin($Pi/4) . ($Pi
and $E are defined.) The user can declare new variables
without the prefix for use only in the interactive
shell. For example:
tridens> $x = 1 1 tridens> set -title 'Plot number $x' tridens> pl 'sq1.dat'
Note that the value of $x is interplotated into the title string. (In perl single quotes do not cause interpolation, but here they do.)
If a line begins with '!' the remainder will be passed to the shell. For example '!ls' will list the directory contents (in unix-like OS's).
The reason for the cumbersome prefix Tridens:: is to allow access or modify all data and subroutines in tridens from the interactive mode, while making it difficult for the interactive user to accidentally change an important subroutine or variable with harmful results.
The up-arrow and down-arrow recall the previous and next command in the command history. Ctrl-p and Ctrl-n do the same thing. Command line editing is in the 'emacs' style by default. That is ctrl-a goes to the beginning of the line. Ctrl-e to the end. ctrl-d deletes a character, etc. It is probably possible to change this somehow. You can press the tab while entering commands to display possible completions. All these editing features are part of the perl 'Readline' packages and may vary with or be missing from your perl installation. Full support is offered by the perl interface to gnu readine (Named something like libterm-readline-gnu-perl) is available in linux distributions.)
An attempt is made to detect one of the supported formats automatically (but this behavior can be disabled or overidden. See -autodata and -grided.) In the standard format, the input data file must have lines of the form
x y val
which causes a polygon with coloring representing val to be drawn at the point x,y. Numbers can be separated by whitespace (spaces,tabs) or commas or anything not used to denote numbers (ie, digits . + - e E). Leading whitespace is ignored. Comment lines in the data file can start with the characters $ % ; ! # . If the option -grided (with details described below) is set (or autodata detection is set) then the data file must consist of only the values, with the coordinates implied by the row and column of the number. With the grided format an n by m plot will be produced from a data file with m lines and n numbers in each line.
The program does not assume that the data is on a triangular grid-- the coordinates x,y can be any numbers. But a hexagon (or square) is drawn at the coordinates of each data point in the input file, so that, if a data point exists for each vertex of a triangular(square) lattice within a region, all space on the plot is filled and no hexagons(squares) overlap. You do not have to have a data point for each point in the region plotted; there can be holes in the data.
The length of the sides of the polygons is computed from the distance from the first data point to the point nearest to the first point in such a way that all the plot surface is covered with no overlap. This can be turned off with option '-noautolength' or by giving the option '-sidelength', in which case the length of the side must be set explicitly on the command line or in interactive mode.
If the data is on a square lattice with different units on the x- and y- axes (e.g. time and distance) use the -nosameunits option below (this is the default). In this case nearest points to the first point in both the x- and y- directions are computed to determine the length of the sides in physical units.
This is tested under Linux. It probably will not work on MS and Apple platforms without some work.
The output file can be one of infilename.ps, infilename.eps, or infilename.pdf. You need to have ghostscript installed in order to write eps or pdf. (All Linux and most Unix installations should have ghostscript. It is available for MS platforms. If you can view a PostScript document under Linux/Unix/MS Windows you almost certainly have ghostscript installed as the backend. ) You may also use some external conversion program to get pdf and eps from the ps generated by tridens.
Arguments that are text strings are enclosed in single or double quotes. Superscripts and subscripts, fonts, colors, and fine control of spacing are implemented using escape codes in the text strings. Each code consists of a backslash '\' followed by one or more characters (neither backslash nor space) followed a space. For example the option: -xlabel '\sym x\^ 2' prints a Greek letter xsi with a superscript "2" as the x-axis label. The string 'e\^ \h-2 -\sym x\rm \^2 2' prints e with -xsi as a superscript and 2 as a supersuperscript, with a negative horizontal half space before the minus sign. This is roughly equivalent to the TeX code e^{-\xi^2}; here TeX is smart enough to automatically position the elements, whereas with tridens fine spacing must be done manually.
The codes are as follows:
Select roman, symbol, boldface, italic, or boldface-italic font. (The symbol font has Greek letters and other math symbols) The specific fonts corresponding to these codes can be changed in the .tridens. You can set the environment variable GS_FONTPATH of the shell in which you run tridens to use fonts than that are not in the default path of ghostscript. There is a $FontPath parameter in .tridens that does the same thing. If you produce pdf using -pdf then the fonts will be embedded by gs in the file containing the plot, making the plot portable. (Currently this is not available for ps and eps. But producing pdf and then using a program such as pdftops will produce an eps plot with high quality embedded fonts.)
Switch to superscript, supersuperscript, subscript, or no super-/sub- script mode. The code '\- ' is used to leave super and subscript modes. These are a bit crude in positioning, but they can be adjusted, for instance with spacing codes given below.
These are horizontal space, horizontal half space, horizontal negative space, horizontal negative half space and the corresponding vertical spaces. You can write '\h+n ' etc. for n=2,3,4,5, where the spaces decrease in size by a factor of one half with each increment of n. For instance '\v-5 ' is a negative one-sixteenth vertical space.
This changes the text color. To see the list of color names, type tridens -listcolors n,
or listcolors n in interactive mode. If you omit the 'n',
then four columns are printed. If you include an integer argument 'n', then n columns
are printed. These colors are approximately the X11 colors, which can be found (with swatches)
many places on the web (eg Wikipedia). Any spaces in color names are converted to underscores
in tridens. In addition to those listed, there are gray1, through gray99, which goes from
almost black to almost white. For example: -title '\red A \blue B \green C'.
This prints a symbol from the Adobe symbol font by name, without explicitly changing the font. That is, you can insert theses symbol names in normal text. To see a list of symbol names use the option -listsymbols. For example: '\sigma \^ 2'. There are also some aliases from TeX/LaTeX to the Adobe symbol names
A double backslash is used to represent a literal backslash. A backslash followed by three digits nnn prints the character corresponding to the octal character code nnn. Refer to PostScript documentation for a list of these character codes. Note these two codes do not include a final space ' '.
The font and super/sub script changes remain in effect until they are changed by another font or super/sub script code.
tridens mysdata
Write a density plot to mysdata.pdf after reading data on a square grid from file mysdata. Size of squares covering the plot are computed automatically: The distance to the closest data point from the first data point is used for the length of a side.
tridens -eps -tri mytdata
Write density plot on triangular grid (covered with hexagons) to mytdata.eps after reading data from file mytdata. Size of hexagons computed automatically.
Further examples of plots illustrating the use of various arguments can be generated using -ex n. For instance tridens -ex 2 creates the second example plot. You can see the example plot immediately if you use tridens -display -ex 2.
Using tridens -demo, produces all the examples sequentially and launhces the viewer to view them, prompting the user after each plot. tridens -demo N instead pauses for N seconds between example plots.
It is usually necessary to enclose strings such as the title string in single quotes rather than double quotes to prevent perl or the shell from trying to interpret the escaped tridens codes.
If labels or other elements of the plot are clipped by the edge of the drawing surface, try reducing the size of the plot with -plotwidth
Important! Setting an option to false is done by prefixing the option with 'no' when passing command line options to tridens from a shell (ie -nokey). In interactive mode, the option is set to false with 'unset' (ie unset key).
They can also be used in interactive mode using the 'set' command. In this case the leading '-' may be omitted. Any options below that take an argument can have either spaces between the option name and the argument or a '=' between the option name and the argument. You are only required to give enough of the characters in an option to distinguish it from other options. For example -sa for -saturation. All gray values use: 0=black, 1=white.
-i Run in interactive mode
-batch FILE Process commands in file FILE as if in interactive mode. If the last statement in FILE is not 'exit', then interactive mode continues after FILE is processed.
-h print short(ish) help message.
-man view long documentation as unix man page. Broken on some platforms (eg, BSD), but -mandoc might still work.
-mandoc print documentation as man page to file tridens.1
-htmldoc print documentation to tridens.html
-html print documentation to tridens.html and try to open it in a browser (firefox by default)
-textdoc print documentation as plain text to standard output.
-pdfdoc print documentation as a pdf file via latex. You must have latex and pdflatex installed.
-paramfile write parameter startup file template to the file .tridens This template can be edited. If present, it will be read before processing command line arguments.
If -square, -tri, or -circle are set interactively, then 'replot' rather than 'plot' must be used.
-square (default) Cause squares to be drawn at data coordinates, not hexagons. By default this uses the -nosameunits option. But for a data file with a nearest neighbor of the first point absent in one of the x or y directions, setting -sameunits will be sucessful as long as a nearest neighbor is present in one direction.
-tri assume a triangular lattice, ie hexagons are drawn. This option automatically sets the -sameunits option.
-circle draw circles on data coordinates. This option automatically sets the -sameunits option.
-sidelength SIDELENGTH length of sides of polygons covering the density plot. By default, this is computed automatically and this option need not be given.
-xsidelength SIDELENGTH length of sides on x-axis. Use only if -nosameunits and -noautolength are both set.
-ysidelength SIDELENGTH length of sides on y-axis. Use only if -nosameunits and -noautolength are both set.
-autolength -noautolength (default) compute length of side of polygon from smallest distance between data points.
-sameunits -nosameunits If set, assume x and y coordinates are in the same units (triangular lattice tiled with hexagons makes more sense this way.) Finding the separation between data points on the x-y plane is computed using Euclidean distance. Use 'replot' after setting this interactively. If unset,(default) assume x and y coordinates have different units. That is, one might be time and another length. When finding the separation between data points to compute the size of the tiling square, x-axis and y-axis are treated separately. This does not work with triangular lattice. Use 'replot' after setting this interactively.
-aspectratio VALUE Sets the aspect ratio of the plot area. A value of 1 is square. A value greater (less) than 1 makes a wide (tall) plot.
-numberpoly -nonumberpoly write numeric value in each hexagon.
-polyborder -nopolyborder draw a black border around each polygon or not
-lattice -nolattice draw the underlying triangular lattice. If used with square lattice the results will be nonsensical.
-latticegray GRAYVALUE shade for the lattice lines if drawn
-xmin, -xmax,-ymin,-ymax FLOAT set boundaries of plot area, overriding automatic boundaries. If FLOAT is ommitted, then the corresponding boundary is once again set automatically. If these are set interactivly, you must reread the file with the "replot" command in order for them to take effect. (Or use 'read' and then 'plot'.)
-cmgray Make a grayscale density plot. That is the value of the data is represented by shades of gray.
With the following three color maps, the value of the data is represented by the named color parameter (hue,saturation, or brightness). In each case the remaining two color parameters may be set manually and will change the appearance of the plot.
-cmhue (default) set color map to 'hue' for density plot. This is a 'false color' plot. If -cmhue is set, then -saturation and -brightness set constant saturation and brightness
-cmbrightness HUE (HUE is from 0 to 1) set color map to 'brightness' for density plot. An optional argument sets the hue. The hue can also be set with -hue. The saturation can be set independently to a constant with -brightness SATURATION.
-cmsaturation HUE (HUE is from 0 to 1) set color map to 'saturation' for density plot. An optional argument sets the hue. The brightness can be set independently to a constant with -brightness BRIGHTNESS.
-cmsatbright hue (hue is from 0 to 1) set color map to 'satbright' for density plot. Both the saturation and brightness are set by the data value. An optional argument sets the hue.
The following three parameters set to a constant any hsb values that are not mapped from the data via the color map chosen above. That is, -hue, has no effect if -cmhue is chosen, etc.
-hue SATURATION (default 1) from 0 to 1
-saturation SATURATION (default 1) from 0 to 1
-brightness BRIGHTNESS (default 1) from 0 to 1
The raw data is normalized so that it can be mapped to color hues in the range 0 to 1. To use only a subset of these colors, the upper and lower limits of this normalization can be changed. If grayscale plot is chosen via -cmgray, then these cmlo and cmhi are interpreted instead as grayscale values. If -cmsaturation is chosen, they are interpreted as saturation values, and likewise with -cmbrightness.
-cmlo HUE (HUE is from 0 to 1 )(default 0) Lowest value of range of hue in mapping data to hue
-cmhi HUE (HUE is from 0 to 1) (default 1) Upper limit of range of hue. For example, if these values for range of color parameter are reversed, the color mapping is reversed.
-uselinear (default) Do not raise the data values to a power prior to plotting.
-usepower raise data values to a power before mapping to colors
-power POWER (default value .5) power to use with -usepower
-title 'The Title' plot title
-titleyoffset FRAC Fractional part of frame height by which title is separtated from frame. Ie, use this to move the title up and down.
-titlexoffset FRAC Fractional part of plot width by which title is separtated from frame. Ie, use this to move the title left and right.
-xlabel 'the x label' set the string used as the x-axis label.
-ylabel 'the y label' set the string used as the y-axis label.
-rotylabel, -norotylabel (default) Rotate (or not) the y-axis label by 90 degrees
-xlabelxoffset FRAC (default 0) Shift the xlabel left or right by FRAC times the plot width.
-xlabelyoffset FRAC (default 0.07) Draw the xlabel at a distance FRAC times the plot height below the plot frame.
-ylabelxoffset FRAC (default 0.07) Draw the ylabel at a distance FRAC times the plot height to the left of the plot frame.
-ylabelyoffset FRAC (default 0) Shift the ylabel up or down by FRAC times the plot height.
-fontscale SCALE (default value 1.0) Scale all character fonts by this factor. Characters in various places have their own scaling; ie title, key, etc. fontscale is an additional factor that multiplies each of these.
-subscale SCALE Scale subscript relative to normal script by this amount.
-supscale SCALE Scale superscript relative to normal script by this amount.
-ssupscale SCALE Scale super-superscript relative to normal script by this amount.
-listcolors N print a list of color names (about 400) for use in strings (for the title, etc.) If N is given, then color names are listed in N columns. N defaults to four if the argument is omitted.
-findcolors STRING
print a list of all color names
that contain STRING as a substring. For example:
tridens -findcolors red lists all colors with 'red' in
the name.
-listsymbols N print a list of Adobe symbols for use in strings (for the title, etc.) If N is given, then symbol names are listed in N columns. N defaults to four if the argument is omitted. A few aliases to latex symbol names are given.
-key -nokey draw the color key. The color key shows the numerical value correpsonding to colors on the plot. Default is set.
-keynbars NUM (default 33) the number of bars (that is the number of different colors) to draw in the color key.
-keylabelskip NUM (default 4) Print a numerical label on a color bar in the key for only every NUMth bar. By default there are then 9 numerical labels on the color bars.
-explim (default 1) largest power of ten to write in normal, rather than scientific notation in the key.
-keydigits DIGITS (default 2) Number of digits to write in mantissa in key labels.
-ticklabeloffset changes distance of tick from frabme
-ticksshiftouter -noticksshiftouter (default unset) Offset the outermost ticks slightly to make them more visible.
-ticklinew NUM scale factor for width of tick lines
-axislinew NUM scale factor for width of line in axes
-polylinew NUM scale factor for width of line around polygon
-framelinew NUM scale factor for width of line in frame.
-ticklength NUM (default 1) A scale factor for the ticklength.
These are scale factors for text in various places on the plot. In addition, there is an overall scale factor set by -fontscale.
-tickfontscale NUM Scale factor for text labeling ticks (default 1)
-keyfontscale NUM Scale factor for text labeling color bars in key (default 1)
-axisfontscale NUM
-exponentfontscale NUM
-numberpolyfontscale NUM
-shownorm show range of hue values rather than raw data range in key (see -showraw)
-showraw (default is set) show range of raw data in key rather than hue values (see -shownorm)
-yaxis -noyaxis draw y-axis or not(default)
-xaxis -noxaxis draw x-axis or not(default)
-axis -noaxis (default) draw both x and y axis, or neither
-ticks -noticks Draw tick marks on all four sides of the frame (default set)
-ticksl -noticksl Draw tick marks on left side of frame
-ticksr -noticksr Draw tick marks on right side of frame
-tickst -notickst Draw tick marks on top side of frame
-ticksb -noticksb Draw tick marks on bottom side of frame
-frame -noframe Draw a rectangular frame around the plot (default true)
-xbuf XFRAC , -ybuf YFRAC, -buf FRAC (default 0.03) space left between plot and frame as a fraction of plot width. In interactive mode, you must use 'replot' for this change to take effect. Use -buf to set both the x and y buffer fractions to the same value.
-outfile FILENAME write the plot to file FILENAME rather than the default, which is to append a filename suffix (.ps,.eps,.pdf) to the input filename.
-infile FILENAME The final non-option arguments on the command line are also interpreted as input filenames. This is intended for interactive use. But the plot command also can set the input filename.
-display -nodisplay Launch external viewer if possible (ghostview by default). The command to launch the viewer is given by the $ViewerGvCmd parameter. If unset, theen suppress launching viewer, even in interactive mode.
-plotwidth PLOTWIDTH (default 12) the width of the plotted data area in centimeters. If the plot is too big for the page and eps or pdf are requested, then the plot is automatically rescaled to fit on the page.
-viewerscale SCALE If using gv as a viewer, scale (that is, magnify) the viewing area by this amount. If you use a different viewer, change the variable $ViewerScaleOpt in the configuration file.
Note that if you change the file type in interactive mode with the following three commands, you must enter 'viewer' to launch a new viewer for the new output plot.
-ps Set the output file format to ps, PostScript.
-eps Set the output file format to eps, Encapsulated PostScript. (must have ghostscript installed)
-pdf Set the output file format to pdf. (default) (must have ghostscript installed)
-latexrun -nolatexrun (default unset) Process the text (eg in title and labels) as latex commands. This calls the ipe program to run latex and replace the text with the output of latex. For instance set xlabel '$e^{x^2}$' will give the desired result. The numbers in the key are not rendered correctly by ipe unless the -latexnumbers option is also set. The pdftoipe program does not try to recenter the resulting image. You may have to do something like set xlabel ' \white .................\black $e^{x^2}$', to put a series of invisible dots to acheive centering. Or try the option -xlabelxoffset. Backslashes in latex code must be escaped with a backslash. Ie. $\\frac{1}{2}$
-latexnumbers Write numbers in the key as latex commands. If option -latexrun is set, they will be processed by latex with the ipe program.
-bbpad PSPOINTS (default 5) Number of PostScript points by which to enlarge the bounding box in each direction. Increase this if part of the plot is clipped at the edge. Decrease this if too much white space is shown around the plot. (This is relevant for 'eps' and 'pdf' formats)
-whitebox -nowhitebox (default on) Draw a white (invisible) frame around the entire plot (including amount specified by option bbpad.) Some programs such as ipe recompute the bounding box, which defeats the purpose of bbpad. These programs will compute the bounding box around this white frame. Otherwise small errors can cause a small part of the plot or text to be clipped.
-portrait (default)
-landscape Rotate the plot by 90 degrees.
-readline -noreadline If set, (some of) command history, commandline editing and command completion are enabled. This only works in interactive mode and depends on having one of the perl readline libraries installed (the perl gnu readline library is probably best).
-autodata -noautodata (default is set) Attempt to detect the data file format. A line with three columns of data is interpreted as "x y val". A line with more data on a line is assumed to be on a grid ('grided') If -grided is set, then this detection is overriden even if -grided is set. For instance, if the data is intended to be on a grid that is three data points wide (rather uncommon), each line will be misinterpreted as "x y val".
-grided -nogrided (default is unset) If unset then data file must have lines of triples "x y value". (But see option autodata to set data format automatically.) If -grided then the data file must have rows separated by newlines interpreted as follows: The number in row j, column i is the value of a data point at position i,j; that is, the data is assumed to be on a grid of unit squares.
-ex n write example plot number n. If -display is given, show plot in viewer.
-demo n write and display all example plots. If optional number n is given, there is a pause of n seconds between plots.
-v verbose print more messages during operation.
-version print tridens version number and exit.
-test run the test suite. requires first running -generatetest with a good copy of tridens.
-generatetest generate the test suite. only for development. Currently broken
Tridens requires a standard perl installation to produce postscript.
ghostscript ('gs') must be installed to produce eps and pdf files.
ghostview ('gv') or xpdf must be installed if you want tridens to launch viewers at the appropriate time. It is probably possible to use other viewers as well.
While not necessary for interactive mode, a perl readline package must be installed in order for readline support (command history, command line editing, tab completion) to be enabled. This makes the interactive mode much more friendly. The perl gnu readline is probably best.
The ipe program is necessary for the -runlatex option to process latex text.
kdialog is used by command gset.
John Lapeyre <lapeyre aaat physics doot arizona dat edu>
Tridens is distributed as a single file.
Copyright 2003, 2011 John Lapeyre, All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.