[Plplot-general] PlPlot and Pixmaps?

[richard b. <ri...@xs...>]

Hi,

A quick question, hopefully.  I'm in the process of writing a scientific
application which will display PDF (probability density function) plots of
individual PSD's executed against seismological trace waveforms.  These
PDF plots are essentially surface plots providing a visual display of the
probability of existence for each x,y coordinate (x=frequency, y=dB).

I had solved this problem two years ago with the use of GMT (producing
postscript) and ImageMagick (converting to .png), but that was when the
production of these plots was static in nature, happening in the
background, and when it didn't matter that GMT required 30 seconds on a
reasonably fast computer to produce the picture.

I am now upgrading the static nature of these plots to be dynamic by
providing a GUI application which will query a database for statistics to
be converted to these PDF plots for immeidate display.  So, I am in the
process of attempting to determine the best method of producing these PDF
plots in any size.  I am using GTK+ for the GUI front-end, and MySQL as
the server back-end, with the final application being fully open-source
and freely available to the seismological community.

In searching for a surface plot solution, I ran across PlPlot and thought
that it would be ideal for my purposes: open-source, multi-platform (my
app must run on Solaris, Linux, and Mac OS X), multi-functional.  However,
getting into the details, I don't see one important feature I require: can
PlPlot output to a pixmap?  Ideally, I would like to pass the data I am
required to visualize to a sub-routine which then passes back either: an
array of data somehow representing the picture I can then convert to a
pixmap myself, or, better yet, a pixmap itself ready for display.

Has anyone else had this requirement?  Is there a solution somehow
provided by PlPlot that can achieve what I desire?

Any information is greatly appreciated.

cheers,

richard boaz