# Chapter 1: Introduction

DISLIN is a library of subroutines and functions that display data graphically. The routines can be used with any display device capable of drawing straight lines with the exception of routines that generate 3-D colour graphics which require special devices. Fortran 77, Fortran 90 and C versions of the library are available.

DISLIN can display graphic information directly on graphic terminals or store them in metafiles. The supported display types are VGA, X Windows, Windows API and Tektronix. The supported file formats are GKSLIN, CGM, HPGL, PostScript, PDF, WMF, PNG, SVG, PPM, BMP, GIF and TIFF. DISLIN metafiles can be printed on various devices using the DISLIN driver program DISDRV.

Chapter 2 describes the file and page formats and the overall structure of DISLIN programs.

Chapter 3 describes routines for the initialization, termination and plotting of text, numbers and symbols.

Chapter 4 presents the format of two-dimensional axis systems. Axes can be linearly or logarithmically scaled and labeled with linear, logarithmic, time, map and user-defined formats.

Chapter 5 describes the routines for plotting curves. Several curves can appear in one axis system and can be differentiated by colour, line style and pattern.

Chapter 6 summarizes parameter setting routines that overwrite default plotting parameters such as fonts, character size and angle, colours, line styles and patterns.

Chapter 7 presents routines to request the values of plot parameters.

Chapter 8 describes the routines for plotting lines, circles, ellipses, vectors and shaded regions.

Chapter 9 describes the utilities available to transform coordinates, sort data and calculate the lengths of numbers and character strings. Elementary image routines and some special routines that are only useful for terminal output are also described in this chapter.

Chapter 10 introduces business graphic routines to create bar graphs and pie charts.

Chapter 11 presents 3-D colour graphics where points can be plotted with coloured or shaded rectangles.

Chapter 12 describes routines for 3-D coordinate systems. Axis systems, curves and surfaces can be drawn from various angular perspectives. All 2-D plotting routines can be used in a 3-D axis system.

Chapter 13 presents 14 different methods to project geographical coordinates onto a plane surface. Several base maps are stored in the library for map plotting.

Chapter 14 describes routines for contouring three-dimensional functions of the form Z = F(X,Y). Contours can be filled with solid lines.

Chapter 15 offers routines for creating graphical user interfaces in Fortran and C programs.

Chapter 16 presents some quick plots that are collections of DISLIN routines for displaying data with one statement.

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