Easy way to make hard copies at full printer resolution [message #12698] |
Wed, 02 September 1998 00:00  |
Kristian Kjaer
Messages: 58 Registered: June 1998
|
Member |
|
|
One thing that makes IDL somewhat inconvenient for _interactive_ data
display
and reduction is the lack of a command (equivalent to - dare I say it -
alt(File)...Print... in Windows programs) to produce a hard copy of the
current plot with the resolution offered by the printer.
There seem to be only the possibilities of
* dumping the screen (resolution limited by screen) or
* set_plot,'ps' & ; repeat all the previous plot-commands
In the (now sadly deceased) DOS-program GENPLOT printer-resolution
hardcopy
was offered very simply and effectively by the program storing all the
vector
strokes since the last screen erase. Then, something like
GENPLOT> hc dev postscript
would produce a *.ps file and optionally spool it.
Now, why doesn't IDL offer something similar, I wonder.
I thought about journalling everything and parsing the journal file to
extract
a redraw.pro so that
IDL> @redraw.pro
would redraw the last plot on the currently selected device but this
would
work poorly in case of, e.g.,
* drawing to more than one window, or
* plot, <very complicated, time-consuming expression> ,or
* plot,y & y=some_function(y) & oplot,y
Then there is IDL5's 'Object Graphics'. I leafed through the manual and,
from
what little I could understand, this rather takes the _interactive_ out
of
IDL.
Ideally I'd like to sit and type into the IDL command prompt, using
native IDL
commands and my own (wrapper, mainly) routines and, when a useful plot
has
resulted on the screen, make a hard copy of it without any extra
trouble.
Does anyone have some ideas or some useful code?
- Thanks, Kristian
|
|
|