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================================================================= EZGraph Notes ================================================================= Copyright PM Enterprises 1990. All Rights Reserved. --------------------------------------------------- PM Enterprises 2315 El Paseo Las Cruces, NM 88001 -------------------- A few excerpts from the EZGraph user manual are provided here. These notes will enable you to get EZGraph up and running. PM Enterprises appreciates you taking the time to evaluate our product. We feel confident that you will find EZGraph very easy to use and quite robust. Don't forget, upon reciept of your registration fee we will rush you a printed user manual. This manual will fully explain the various features of EZGraph and show you how to use the options to create many different types of graphs. In addition you will be provided with a telephone number that can be used to receive customer support. Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises ================================================================= Introduction ================================================================= EZGraph creates 2 dimensional scientific type graphs from simple ASCII data files. EZGraph has many features and options that allow you to customize almost every aspect of a graph. Nevertheless, all the features in the world are useless if you can't use them or if you don't know what affect they might have. This is why EZGraph was designed with pull-down menus and a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) display that provides instant feedback about the decisions you make. The EZGraph menu system provides two different ways to work with the program. Menu items can be selected with the keyboard or you can use a Microsoft compatible mouse. Most of the options in EZGraph can be changed with the mouse alone, hence our products slogan: "Scientific Line Graphs At The Tip Of Your Finger". Regardless, not all operations can be performed with a mouse, you just can't beat an old fashioned keyboard for things like text and numeric entry. EZGraph allows you to create both line and bar type graphs. With the line graphs you have several different choices of line type including thick lines and symbols. Bar graphs can be customized with different bar styles and can be used in conjunction with line graphs. EZGraph can plot up to five data sets in a graph. A data set is an ASCII file that can contain an (almost) unlimited number of X,Y data pairs arranged in a column format. Each data set is independent and can have it's own line type and line color. EZGraph provides a tremendous amount of control over the graph design. You have complete control over the axis scaling, the number and type of graph grid lines, the position of each axis, even the decimal format of the axis grid labels. Each axis of the graph can be plotted with a linear or a logarithmic scale. You can place an axis title on each of the four graph borders. You can set up a graph legend that automatically updates itself. You can place text anywhere on the graph with the freehand annotation feature and you can add lines and boxes to the graph. Large blocks of text can be placed on the graph with the text block function. All of the text placed on a graph may contain super and sub-scripts. Because EZGraph deals only with the vectors required to draw a graph, a graph and all of the annotation can be thought of as a unit. The actual size of this unit is defined by the physical corners on the page (screen) and the graph is always drawn relative to the four physical corners. Using the cursor you can set the physical corners of the graph anywhere on the page. Changing the size of the graph has no effect on the internal appearance of the graph unit, all of the relationships are maintained. The graph simply appears smaller or bigger. This Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises capability allows you to place a graph of any size anywhere on the page and makes it possible to put as many graphs as you want on a page. After you have designed your graph and are content with its appearance, you can save all of the graph parameters in a format file. A format file is like a recipe in that it contains all of the information necessary for EZGraph to reproduce your graph. You may have tried the demos that came with EZGraph, these demos are created from a format file. EZGraph will also allow you to save an entire image of the screen to disk. Visual slide shows can be created by saving screen images for later playback. Your registration kit includes a new program called EZGShow. You can use this program to set up custom slide shows that run automatically. EZGraph can dump screen images to a printer or it can reproduce your graph exactly on a HPGL graphics plotter. Screen dumps are supported for standard 9-pin, 24-pin, and laserjet printers. EZGraph uses simple bit-mapped techniques to send the printer an image of the screen. This leads to the problem of hardware dependent resolution and less than optimal graphs. If you need higher quality then you can use the vector-based HPGL plotter output to create presentation quality graphs. EZGraph supports any HPGL device that is compatible with the 7470 series of Hewlett Packard plotters. In addition, there are currently several products available that will allow you to produce high quality HPGL output on both dot-matrix and laserjet printers. It should also be mentioned that most modern desktop publishing programs like Ventura Publisher and PageMaker will accept HPGL files, which means you can import your EZGraph plots directly into a document. EZGraph uses simple ASCII data files that can come from many sources. The data files are column based and easy to work with. You may have some sort of experimental data that you have collected on your own, in this situation you can use a text editor or word processor to enter the data directly into an ASCII file. Perhaps you have written a BASIC or FORTRAN program that generates data, in this case you can have your program output the results to a file. If you are using a spreadsheet, all you need to do is save the appropriate columns of data in an ASCII file. EZGraph includes a run-time function generator that can be used to evaluate simple or complex mathematical formulas. Suppose Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises you have a math function and you would like to see what kind of a curve the formula generates. You can use EZGraph to evaluate the function over a finite interval and generate a data file with the results. And finally, EZGraph is capable of performing some very useful tasks like curve fitting and smoothing. The data manipulation routines that EZraph provides are normally found only in programs costing hundreds of dollars. ================================================================= Getting Started ================================================================= ** Hardware Requirements... EZGraph requires an IBM compatible PC or AT computer with graphics capabilities. The computer will need at least 512K of memory and if present, EZGraph will utilize a math co-processor. EZGraph supports the four major IBM video standards; MGA (Hercules), CGA, EGA, and VGA. EZGraph uses DOS function calls to drive the graphics equipment, therefore it is important that your video adapter be sufficiently compatible. EZGraph can be used with dual floppy disks or a hard disk. EZGraph will work with any Microsoft compatible mouse or trackball. EZGraph can send screen dumps to any Epson compatible 9-pin or 24-pin dot matrix printer as well as Hewlett Packard compatible laserjet printers. EZGraph generates plotter data that can be used by any plotter or plotter emulation program that accepts the standard HPGL graphics language. ** Setting up EZGraph... Before you do anything you should make back-up copies of your original EZGraph diskettes. If your not sure how to do this refer to the DISKCOPY command in your DOS manual. If you are going to use EZGraph on a dual-floppy PC you will need to set up three disks, a working disk for the EZGraph program, one for the auxiliary programs and another to store data files. If you are going to use EZGraph on a hard disk then you should create a directory for EZGraph and a directory for your data files. If your not sure how to do this refer to the MKDIR and CHDIR commands in your DOS manual. Once you have an EZGraph directory, for example C:\EZGRAPH, copy all of the files on your original EZGraph diskettes into this directory. Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises EXAMPLE: C:\MKDIR EZGRAPH C:\CHDIR EZGRAPH C:\EZGRAPH COPY A:*.* To run the program, make sure you are in the EZGraph directory and type EZG at the DOS prompt. ** Running EZGraph on a MonoGraphics system... If your computer has a monographic (MGA or Hercules) video adapter you need to take a special step before starting EZGraph; you must load the driver program called EZGherc. EZGherc is a special driver program that enables EZGraph to use your monographics video card, without it, EZGraph simply won't work. The best thing to do is use a batch file to make sure EZGherc gets loaded each time you run EZGraph. Just such a batch file has been provided for you in the distribution diskette, it is called EZGh.BAT. To start EZGraph on a monographic system type EZGH at the DOS prompt. ** Running EZGsetup... Before you begin you should configure EZGraph for your particular computer by running the EZGSetup program. EZGSetup creates a file named EZG.CFG that contains information about your EZGraph configuration. Each time you install EZGraph on a new computer, or EZG.CFG gets deleted, you should run EZGSetup. If you want, you can keep different copies of EZG.CFG and use batch files to select the appropriate copy for different tasks. EZGSetup is located on the auxiliary disk, to start the program type EZGSetup at the DOS prompt. If you are working on a dual floppy system, put your EZGraph working disk in drive A: and your auxiliary disk in drive B:. At the A: prompt type B:EZGSetup. This will ensure that EZG.CFG ends up on the EZGraph disk. When you run EZGsetup you will be asked several different questions. To select an item on the menu, use the cursor bar to highlight your choice and then press return. EZGsetup will want to know which type of printer you are using. You may choose between a 9-pin, 24-pin, and a laserjet printer. If your not sure which type of dot-matrix printer you have there is a simple rule of thumb; If your printer outputs NLQ (Near Letter Quality) then you have a 9-pin printer, if your printer outputs LQ (Letter Quality) then you have a 24-pin printer. Some 9-pin printers are the EPSON FX and IBM ProPrinter. Some 24-pin printers are the EPSON LQ and NEC PinWriter. If you Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises select a 24-pin printer and it doesn't work then run EZGsetup again and select a 9-pin printer. You will be asked which port your printer is connected to, either LPT1 pr LPT2. If your not sure just make a guess, most probably your printer is connected to LPT1. You can run the EZGsetup again if your guess is wrong. EZGsetup will ask you to select one of 7 available startup graphics modes: You may select any video mode that your hardware supports. Don't worry If you select a video mode that is not supported by your hardware, EZGraph will automatically default to the highest resolution video mode that your hardware can display. If you are going to be using a plotter with EZGraph, you will need to select the serial port and baud rate that your plotter is using. You will need to know which serial port you are using, COM1 or COM2. Again if your not sure just guess, you can come back later and select the other port if your guess is wrong. As for the baud rate that your plotter is using, if your not sure then you will need to check the documentation that came with your plotter. Make sure you get this right as EZGraph won't plot a thing if the baud rate is wrong. The serial communication parameters that EZGraph uses are no parity, 8 data bits, and 1 stop bit. Almost all plotters uses these parameters as their default settings, if your having trouble with your plotter connection you might want to double check that the plotter is in fact set up with these parameters. If your not using a plotter then just select anything at these prompts, it doesn't matter. Finally, you will need to tell EZGraph which plotter pens to associate with the 16 colors that your computer screen can display. HPGL compatible plotters have anywhere from 1 to 8 pens. Consult your plotter documentation if your not sure how your plotter numbers the pens. The information you will be providing will tell EZGraph which pen to select when it is drawing something with a particular color. If your not going to do any plotting just keep pressing return until you have answered the 16 prompts. If you intend to use a plotter, take some time to develop a strategy for using your different color plotter pens. Feel free to select the same pen to use with different screen colors. Note that if you are using EZGraph on a MGA or CGA monitor, the only screen colors are 0 and 1, so the only plotter pens that will ever be selected are the ones you choose for these two colors. Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises ** Using a mouse... If you are going to use a Microsoft compatible mouse with EZGraph, you need to do a few things before you start. Most mouses (mice ?) utilize a special mouse driver program. Typically you will load this driver either in your CONFIG.SYS file or in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. EZGraph uses the mouse driver and if you have not loaded it prior to running EZGraph, the mouse won't work. If your not sure how to load the mouse driver please check the documentation that came with your mouse, it will explain what you need to do. ** Using the keyboard... Although EZGraph works best with a mouse, you don't have to have one to use the program. You can use the keyboard cursor keys instead. If you have an enhanced keyboard you can use either set of cursor keys, if you are using the cursor keys on the numeric keypad, make sure the NumLock is off. The F1 and F2 keys on your keyboard act like the left and right mouse buttons on a mouse. Whenever you are at a place in the program that requires pressing the left or right mouse button, you can press the F1 or F2 key instead, respectively. Remember this while reading the manual and whenever you see the phrase "press the left/right mouse button" you can replace it with "press the F1/F2 key". One of the nicest things about a mouse is that you can move the cursor very rapidly. In an attempt to match this performance with the cursor keys, EZGraph keeps track of how long you have held a cursor key down. If you hold a cursor key down for more than a brief moment the cursor begins to "accelerate", taking bigger and bigger steps. After you release the cursor key EZGraph will wait a few seconds and then slow the cursor back down to the slowest speed. If your trying to position the cursor and it is taking steps that are to big, tap the spacebar; this will slow the cursor down immediately. If you are running EZGraph on an AT computer, see the discussion on "improving keyboard cursor speed" in the tips and techniques section on how to speed up your cursor. ** Operating the menu... When you start EZGraph you will see a menu across the top of the screen. Just to the right of the menu is a display that indicates the position of the cursor. In the upper right hand of the screen is the help button. Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises You will notice that each menu item has one character in uppercase, this is called the "key" character. On color monitors the key character will also appear in a different color. You can select a menu item by pressing its respective key character. Alternately, you can move the cursor to the menu area of the screen and a highlight bar will appear. The highlight bar will follow the cursor. By pressing the left mouse button you will select the currently highlighted menu item. All of the EZGraph menus follow this convention; press the key character or use the cursor to highlight the menu item. When you select a menu item from the main menu you will see a sub-menu drop down. Again you can use the methods discussed above to select a menu item. If you want to make the drop down menu go away, press the ESC key or move the cursor outside of the menu area and press the left mouse button. Whenever you are using the EZGraph command system, you can always back up without making any changes by pressing the ESC key. You can also back out of menus by moving the cursor out of the menu area and pressing the left mouse button. EZGraph has an on line help facility that will give you a brief description of the various menu commands. Whenever the help facility is available you will see the help button in the upper left hand corner of the screen. You may activate the help by pressing the F10 key or by moving the cursor onto the help button area and pressing the left mouse button. After you have read the help message you can return to the menu by pressing any key. ================================================================= EZGraph Data Files ================================================================= ** The format of a regular data file is: X1 Y1 S1 X2 Y2 S2 . . . . . . Xn Yn Sn Where Xn is the nth X coordinate, Yn is the nth Y coordinate, and the optional Sn is the standard deviation of the Y coordinate. If error bars are selected the length of the error bar will be 2Sn. The only rule regarding the placement of numbers in a regular data file is that the numbers be separated by at least Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises one space. ** The format of a bar graph data file is: YMIN1 YMAX1 LABEL1 YMIN2 YMAX2 LABEL2 . . . . . . YMINn YMAXn LABELn Where YMINn is the minimum Y coordinate of bar n, YMAXn is the maximum Y coordinate of bar n, and LABELn is the label that will be placed directly underneath bar n. The only rule regarding the placement of data in a bar graph data file is that the numbers and labels be separated by at least one space. ** Comments is data files... You may include comments in your data files. Any line that begins with a semicolon ";", will be treated as a comment. It is a good idea to put comments in your data files noting where the data came from. ================================================================= Sample Session ================================================================= ** Creating a line graph... The first thing you must do is create some data files. For the purpose of this example we will assume that you are creating the data files in the same directory as the EZGraph program. Use a text editor or a word processor to enter the following data and create a file named MCELLS.DAT: ;Example data file MCells.Dat ; 2 10 3 5 16 4 10 28 6 18 39 7 32 47 8 64 64 9 ;End Now create another data file named PCELLS.DAT by entering the following data into the file: Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises ;Example data file PCells.dat. ; 2 1 2 5 2 2 10 3 3 18 5 4 32 9 6 64 12 8 ;End Now start up EZGraph by typing EZG at the DOS prompt. Select the File sub-menu. Select file-1: enter "MCELLS.DAT" Select file-2: enter "PCELLS.DAT" Press ESC and Select the Data sub-menu. Select Clear scrn. Select the Data sub-menu again. Select Plot now, EZGraph will re-draw the screen. Select the Size sub-menu. Select Axis endpts. Select the X-axis. Enter 0 for the min coordinate and 80 for the max coordinate. Select Axis endpts. Select the Y-axis. Enter 0 for the min coordinate and 80 for the max coordinate. Press ESC and select the Grids sub-menu. Select X axis grids and enter 8 major grids and 1 minor grid. Select Y axis grids and enter 8 major grids and 1 minor grid. Press ESC and select the Text sub-menu. Select axis Titles. Select the Bottom title and enter: Contrast (%) Select axis Titles. Select the Left title and enter: Response (ips) Press ESC and Select the Data sub-menu. Select Clear scrn. Select the Data sub-menu again. Select Plot now, EZGraph will plot the two data files. You now have a simple line graph displayed on the page. If you like you can continue to experiment with the different graph parameters. ** Creating a bar graph... Use a text editor or a word processor to enter the following data and create a file named BULBS.DAT: Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises ;Example file BULBS.DAT. ; 0 20 5 0 50 6 0 120 7 0 250 8 0 580 9 0 410 10 0 430 11 0 70 12 0 60 13 0 10 14 ;End Now start up EZGraph by typing EZG at the DOS prompt. Select the File sub-menu. Select file-1: enter "BULBS.DAT" Press ESC and Select the Data sub-menu. Select Line type. Select Bar and press Enter at the next prompt. Select Crss. Select Clear scrn. Select the Data sub-menu again. Select Plot now, EZGraph will draw the bar graph. Select the Size sub-menu. Select Axis endpts. Select the Y-axis. Enter 0 for the min coordinate and 1000 for the max coordinate. Press ESC and Select the Text sub-menu. Select axis Titles. Select the Bottom title and enter: LifeTime In Hours Select axis Titles. Select the Left title and enter: Frequency Press ESC and Select the Data sub-menu. Select Clear scrn. Select the Data sub-menu again. Select Plot now, EZGraph will plot the two data files. You now have a bar graph displayed on the page. If you like you can continue to experiment with the different graph parameters. ================================================================= Tips And Techniques ================================================================= ** Improving keyboard cursor speed... If you are using an AT class computer and you don't have a mouse, you may use the supplied program named FASTKEY to speed up the keyboard cursor keys. Simply run FASTKEY before you start EZGraph, in fact you may want to have your AUTOEXEC.BAT file run Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises FASTKEY every time you start your computer. ** Improving performance with a cache or a RAM-disk... If you are working with large data files and are finding that EZGraph takes to long to re-draw the graph, you should consider using a disk-cache or a RAM-disk. If you use a hard-disk cache, the computer will usually be able to find the data that EZGraph needs in the cache. If you don't have a cache program you may want to use a RAM-Disk similar to the DOS VDISK program. Before starting EZGraph, copy your data files into the RAM-Disk. Before you turn your computer off don't forget to copy the modified RAM-Disk data files back on to a floppy or hard disk. ** Overlaying line plots on bar graphs... It is possible to superimpose line plots over bar graphs. Each bar is located with an X coordinate evenly divisible by 10. For example, in a bar graph with 4 bars the first bar will be centered about 10, the second bar at 20, the third at 30 and the fourth at 40. In this example the auto-scale function would set the X-axis endpoints at 5 and 45. The Y-axis coordinates are determined by the actual height of the bars. To place a line plot over the bar graph, create a regular data file with the proper values to fall within the endpoints determined by the bar graph (the normalize routine may be useful to transform a data file into a range compatible with the bar graph). ** Batch processing with format files... If you create a graph format file by using the save format command, you can give the name of this file on the EZGraph command line and EZGraph will immediately load the format and display the graph. The last line of the format file contains a NOP command. You can use an editor to replace this NOP command with a PRINT or PLOT command. This will cause EZGraph to perform the indicated operation when the format file is passed in on the command line. After the graph is plotted or printed, EZGraph will quit and return to DOS. ** Batch plotting HPGL files... If you use EZGraph to send HPGL plotter data to a disk file, you can plot this file at a later date without using EZGraph. Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises You will need to use the DOS MODE and COPY commands to do this. If you are not familiar with the MODE command refer to your DOS documentation. As an example, suppose your plotter is connected to COM1: and is running at 2400 Baud and your data file is named PLOTTER.DAT and is located in the current directory. The following commands will do the trick: MODE COM1:2400,N,8,1 COPY PLOTTER.DAT COM1: ================================================================= Using EZGShow ================================================================= EZGShow is a program that allows you to create, edit, and maintain screen image slide shows. You can use the program with screen images that EZGraph has stored to disk. EZGShow can display each screen in the slide show for a predetermined amount of time or it can wait for a keypress after an image is loaded. EZGShow is located on the auxiliary disk, to start the program type EZGShow at the DOS prompt. When the program is started you will be asked if you want to run, create, or edit a slide show. Before you can run a slide show must create a slide show file. A slide show file contains a list of screen image filenames and time delay values to determine how long the images will be displayed. Each slide show file can hold up to 100 screen image filenames. When you choose to create a slide show you will be asked to provide a valid DOS filename for the slide show file. You will then go into slide show edit mode. You will see a list of slide show slots. In the list you will see a column for a screen image filename, a column labeled PT, and a column labeled PK. The PT stands for "Pause Time" and the PK stands for "Press Key". If the pause time is 0 there will be an X in the PK column, indicating that the image will be displayed until a key is pressed. In edit mode you can enter a screen image filename into any of the 100 slots. Use the cursor keys, the Page-Up, and the Page-Down keys to highlight the image slot you wish to edit, then press return. When you have selected a file position you will be asked to enter a valid DOS filename for the screen image. You will then be asked to enter the pause time for the image. You may enter the Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises number of seconds you wish to have the image displayed. If you enter 0 then the image will be displayed until a key is pressed. When you are done editing the slide show press ESC to return to the main menu. If you choose to edit a slide show from the main menu the procedure will be just like creating a slide show. The difference is that you will be prompted for the old slide show filename instead of a new filename. When you run a slide show you will be asked for the slide show filename. As soon as you have entered the filename the slide show will begin. EZGShow will display each file that it finds in the slide show and either pause for the requested time or wait for a keypress. Press the ESC key at any time to abort the slide show and return to the main menu. If a screen image has been displayed and EZGShow is waiting for a keypress, you can press the F1 key to have the screen printed. You can pass the name of a slide show file on the EZGShow command line and EZGShow will automatically start running the slide show. When displaying screen images, EZGShow will use the video mode that it finds in the EZG.CFG file. You must make sure that the screen images you are loading were created in the same video mode that you select with EZGSetup. Copyright 1990 by PM Enterprises