PSRCHIVE documentation: psrplot

1.0 Purpose

The Pulsar Archive Plotter, psrplot, is a highly configurable plotting program that may be used to create customized plots of pulsar data. Using the PGPLOT graphics subroutine library, psrplot produces publication quality plots with any of the available device handlers. Therefore, it can be used both during data analysis as a flexible visualization tool and during manuscript preparation to create more refined Postscript figures.

The program utilizes the family of clases derived from Plot. Each class in the Plot family tree is given a name, and each plot is chosen by specifying its name (or its single-letter code). Each plot also accepts a number of configuration options, which may be specified by name either on the command line or through the use of a style file.

2.0 Usage

psrplot is fairly simple to use. Most commands are of the form: 
psrplot -p plot [-c options] [-j jobs] [-l loop] filenames
where:
  • options are plotting options (such as the label on the x-axis);
  • jobs are preprocessing operations to be performed on the data before plotting (such as integration in frequency); and
  • loop is an index over which to loop (such as plotting for each sub-integration).
Please see the psrsh documentation for more about jobs.

The available plotting options will depend upon the chosen plot. For a list of available plots, type: 

psrplot -P
For a list of options specific to plot, use: 
psrplot -C plot
There is also a fairly large number of plot options that are common to all plots; however, each plot may have different default values for each option. To list these common options and see the default values for plot, use: 
psrplot -A plot
Multiple filenames can be specified on the command line either individually or using wildcard characters. Each file will be displayed in sequence, one after the other.

2.1 Details

Please follow the links for more detailed information on each topic:

3.0 Algorithms

The attribute syntax is defined by the TextInterface::Class, which is described in the Building a text interface tutorial.

4.0 Testing and examples

Examples are given throughout the documentation in section 2.1.

5.0 Known bugs and features that require implementation

  • None at this time.