HPLOT is a Fortran callable facility for producing HBOOK[bib-HBOOK] output on graphic
devices other than the line printer. Its main design objective is to be
able to produce drawings and slides of a quality suitable for talks and
publications. To this end, it does not produce all the numeric information
of the HBOOK output routines (which give what can be regarded as working
histograms) but, on the other hand, it is not restricted by the line
printer resolution or character size. The reader is of course supposed to
be familiar with the HBOOK package.
The present version of HPLOT has been developed in the context of the
Physics Analysis Workstation project PAW[bib-PAW].
HPLOT can be used either in BATCH mode or interactively with PAW. When
running in BATCH, one can write a metafile via the HIGZ/GKS packages and
interpret these metafiles using the standard utilities such as GRCONV,
GRPLOT (see e.g. [bib-GKS1,bib-GKS2]).
PostScript file can also be produce with the native HIGZ PostScript
driver. This way is certainly now the most popular because it doesn't need
any translation programs to generate the paper output.
Users are strongly encouraged to use the PAW system to make good quality
pictures. The complete HPLOT functionality described in this manual is
available interactively in PAW.