Axis

Axis is a program for making two dimensional graphs. It features automatic scaling, logarithmic axes, error bars, and labels with Greek letters, superscripts and subscripts, and special characters. The output of axis is a file using a subset of the UNIX device independent graphics commands, which can then be plotted on any device for which a plot filter is available. Such a filter is the plot program available in the plotutils package.

The original axis code comes from Doug Toussaint. I modified the lowlevel.c (actually converted to lowlevel.h) to interface with the GNU plotutils libraries. I also added color line styles. The option name is cm (Color Mode) and the correspondence is:

0 "black",
1 "red",
2 "green",
3 "blue",
4 "magenta",
5 "cyan"

By using "plot" from the GNU plotutils package you get color PostScript now. The old xplot and psplot programs are now obsolete (actually they can not be used). They can both be replaced by the gnu plot program.

"plot -T X" is the replacement of xplot

"plot -T ps" is the replacement of psplot

"plot" has also several other types of output format (X ps meta fig pnm gif etc.) which may be useful.

See http://www.gnu.org/software/plotutils for details on GNU plotutils libraries and programs (plot graph etc.). Also http://www.gnu.org/manual/plotutils/html_mono/plotutils.html contains a manual on their usage.

See test.ax for an example of a colored axis file.

X11 output:
axis < test.ax | plot -T X
PS output:
axis < test.ax | plot -T ps > test.ps

The source for axis can be downloaded from here: axis-1.1.tar.gz. An rpm package tested with redhat 7.3 is also available here: axis-1.1-1.i386.rpm

The source of plotutils (version 2.4.1) I used to build axis can be downloaded from here: plotutils-2.4.1.tar.gz, plotutils-2.5.0.tar.gz. An rpm package tested with redhat 7.3 is also available here: plotutils-2.4.1-2.i386.rpm

The manual for axis is available in PS and PDF.