Re: pgplot/database "progres"

[Chris Albertson <chrisa@wavenet.com>]

Michael,

I saw your message about pgplot compile problems.  I didn't
know what exactly pgplot was so I looked around a bit.  Running
"locate" on my own system turned up a set of RPM files for it.
(I just happend to have a CD with snapshot of the RedHat FTP
site in the CDROM drive)

So check out
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/i386/pgplot-5.1.1-4.i386.rpm
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/i386/pgplot-demos-5.1.1-4.i386.rpm
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/i386/pgplot-devel-5.1.1-4.i386.rpm
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/i386/pgplot-motif-5.1.1-4.i386.rpm

I don't know what exactly you are doing with it but gnuplot can
make just about any kind of plot.  It is command line driven and
compiles on unix/dos/windows.

You talked about Postscript vs. GIF graphics.

GIF is pretty universal +but+ large GIFs take forever to
download for those using modems for thier Internet connection.
Gifs also look pretty bad when printed to paper.  The only
good thing about them is that GIF viewers are build into
most browers.

Postscript will require people to install a Postscript viewer
"helper function" into thier Browser.  This is not hard to do
with Netscape and Ghostscripts works and is free.  With
Postscript, because it is a vector format, printouts to paper look
very good and down load times should be faster

You may want to leave the graphic format as a user option.  Converting
amoung Postscript/JPG/GIF is pretty simple, just a command line
filter in each case.

The new Database Merge program is comming along.  I did find a few
hours to work on it over the hollydays but am mostly taking a break.

It now runs and produces some result and does not crash and core
dump.  That's about all that can be said for it however.  I have not
checked if the result is correct and there are some special cases
I am ignoring.  Speed looks resonable.  It seems to be able to collate
100,000 observations while you wait.

   --Chris Albertson             home: chrisa@wavenet.com           
     Redondo Beach, California   work: chris@topdog.logicon.com