Why does SEP still use Vplot?

Joe Dellinger

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ABSTRACT

Vplot is SEP's ``home-brew'' plotting system. Ten years after its creation, SEP continues to use Vplot even though Vplot is not suited for interactive plotting. Many better-written commercial and academic packages are now available, but SEP has not switched yet because these packages fail to provide certain critical capabilities needed by researchers:

• Ability to run on many machines
• Complete set of graphics primitives
• Virtual device concept
• Ability to plot well on many devices
• Batch-mode manipulation

The relative strengths and weaknesses of Vplot and current ``window'' systems are based upon their differing aims. Vplot attempts to be a good system for archiving important plots; it is meant for making static figures that will go into papers or onto slides. Current window systems are designed as a base for interactive application programs. Both sorts of capabilities are needed by researchers.