[Plplot-general] strip charts

[Steven J. <ste...@ie...>]

I have an old DOS-based data acquisition application that I've almost
completely ported over to Linux (on its way to being open-sourced). The
only two things left to port are the low level data acquisition (which
looks like it can be handled easily by the Comedi library) and graphics.

The application allows the user to create (via scripting) simple x-y
plots and strip charts, intermixed with text boxes. An example can be
seen at http://home1.gte.net/res000mx/tidal.gif. The strip charts in
this case are all the same size, but the user has control of size,
aspect ratio, and placement.

All the graphics is done with low-level (mid-80's) Borland C++
libraries--all that's really required is the ability to draw points and
lines, fill rectangles, display text, and pan the display within a
viewport (which is done by copying display memory).

One approach is to find the applicable X Windows primitives and use
those. (I know Unix very well, but not X. So that might be a lot of
work.) Another is to use higher-level facilities and replace my code for
drawing axes, tick marks, labels, etc. with something else. As you can
see, there's nothing special about the graphs.

I can't tell from the documentation (and the code) whether I could use
PLplot for this or not. I need to have multiple charts, not all the same
size, and I need to have multiple active strip charts (not merely
multiple pens on the same chart), each being updated asynchronously. I'm
willing to do some coding and contribute to PLplot, but I'm really
looking for something that will reproduce existing capabilities quickly.
I will be interested in better ways of doing things once everything
works under Linux and I can drop DOS support.

Suggestions, advice?

Steve