PG2PLplot home page

PG2PLplot is code intended to help the transition from Fortran code linked against PGPlot to linking it against PLplot. Reasons why one might want to make that transition is that the latter is open-source code and actively maintained, while the output looks better and can be obtained in more-modern formats. However, not everything that can be done with PGPlot can also be done with PLplot (yet). Examples that spring into mind are keeping an X-window open after the code finished, and interactively reading coordinates from an X-window.

The developers of PLplot are carrying out a dramatic modernisation of their code. The drawback is that newer versions are currently not always backward compatible. PG2PLplot v5.12 should work for PLplot v5.12 and 5.13. Please install PG2PLplot v0.4.1 for PLplot versions earlier than v5.12.

After installation, you should typically do something like this to use your code containing PGPlot calls with PLplot:

	      gfortran  -lplplotf95d -lplplotf95cd  -lpg2plplot   code.f90 -o program   # Plplot 5.10?
	      
	      gfortran  -lplplotf95 -lplplotf95c    -lpg2plplot   code.f90 -o program   # Plplot 5.11?
	      
	      gfortran  -lplplotf95                 -lpg2plplot   code.f90 -o program   # Plplot 5.12
	      
	      gfortran  -lplplotfortran             -lpg2plplot   code.f90 -o program   # Plplot 5.13

If the above do not work, you should be able to find your PLplot libraries using

	      $ locate libplplot |grep -E '\.so$'
	          or
	      $ find /usr/lib* -name "libplplot*.so"

In the results, remove the path (e.g. /usr/lib, replace the initial lib with -l and remove the trailing .so.

If you are using CMake for your projects, you can use FindPG2PLplot.cmake and CMakeLocations.cmake from CMakeFiles.

Currently, many PGPlot routines are included, but the code is by no means exhaustive. One-to-one translation is sometimes perfectly possible, sometimes difficult, and sometimes impossible. In the first case, the code should run without any problems (even though for instance the line style or pen colour may be somewhat different), in the second case an imperfect translation is silently done, in the third case the code will warn that no translation exists. The default installer uses CMake. The code has been used with gfortran (4.5 and newer), g95 and Intel Fortran and can be used under the conditions of version 3 of the GPL. PG2PLplot has been written by AstroFloyd and DrJoe.

PG2PLplot pages

PG2PLplot project page on SourceForge (code download, bug reports, etc.)

Code documentation generated by Doxygen

Gentoo ebuilds

Science overlay (sci-libs/PG2PLplot)
AstroFloyd overlay (sci-libs/PG2PLplot)

PG2PLplot has been used by:

MESA — Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics

evTools

AnalyseMCMC

Course Astro 465 (Stellar Astrophysics) at the University of Alberta, Canada

Contact

You can contact AstroFloyd through AstroFloyd.org or SourceForge.