Re: small graphics in Ferret

[Jaison Kurian <jaison@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mark Carson,
                 The default plots produced by Ferret is more 
"informative" rather than nice looking. You have to the default
parameters to get a plot in desired shape and quality. You can
control the "look" of the plot almost in all aspects. 

In my opinion pdf/eps figures will be better than gif. 
Here is a quick example. Also you can see very good discussions
in the mail archive. Links to few of them are here :

Earlier Billy had send a nice mail detailing many aspects of 
"beautifying" plots : 

http://ferret.wrc.noaa.gov/Ferret/Mail_Archives/fu_2003/msg00310.html 

Also have a look at the series of mails starting with this one :

http://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/Ferret/Mail_Archives/fu_2003/msg01407.html


!---------example.jnl--------------------
!
! sp rm -f metafile.plt ;  set mode meta   ! for ps output

  set data etopo20  ! dataset available with Ferret disribution
  set reg/x=65:90/y=0:15
  set window/clear       ! do a clean-up

! make a plot in default way

  define view/xlim=0.05:0.45/ylim=0.4:0.8 vleft
  set view vleft
  shade/set/pal=default rose
  go remove_logo  ;  go unlabel 4
  ppl shade       ;  go land 1

  message

! let us see an "beautified" plot

  define view/xlim=0.5:0.9/ylim=0.4:0.8 vright
  PPL AXLSZE, 0.15 0.15         
  PPL AXLINT,2,1 ;  PPL AXNMTC,4,4
  
  set view vright

  shade/set/lev=(-5000,1000,200)/hlim=65:90:5/vlim=0:15:5/\
          key=continuous/palette=land_sea/title=" " rose
  go remove_logo ;   go unlabel 4
  ppl shakey 1, 1, 0.12, 5, 4, 8, 5.8, 6.2, 1.4, 4.2 
  ppl shade ; go land 1
  label 77.5, 17, 0, 0, 0.20 Surface Relief (m)

! if you want to get a ps/pdf output

! cancel mode meta ; ppl clsplt   
! sp rm -f myplot.ps        ! to remove previous versions if any
! sp Fprint -l cps -R myplot.ps metafile.plt
! sp p2pdf myplot.ps               ! to get a PDF file 
! sp rm -f metafile.plt myplot.ps  ! remove unwanted ones

! Restore defaults

  PPL AXLSZE, 0.1, 0.1
  PPL AXLINT,2,1   ;  PPL AXNMTC,1,1

!-----------------end of example.jnl---------------

Hope this helps

With regards 

Jaison 



On Mon, 15 Nov 2004, Mark Carson wrote:

> Hello!
> 
> I'm trying to build some graphs for publication, and so far Ferret has
> not produced graphics (shade plots, mostly) that scale well or can scale
> to be small enough.  The fonts seem to get crunched too much as well as
> the colors start to blur together somewhat.  I need for the graphics to
> be not much larger than 3 inches printed (maybe about 300x300 pixels on
> screen).  Are there any tricks to get Ferret to produce clean graphics
> at that size?  I've tried the frame command with the window sized to the
> right dimensions and also tried a larger window that I used graphics
> software to scale it down after "framing" it.  I just wish they weren't
> gif files.  If Matlab is the better answer, let me know because I
> already have some ideas on that front too.  But Ferret is faster at
> generating the graphs without so much programming.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Mark Carson
> OCRD / PMEL
> 

-- 
___________________________________________________

    Jaison Kurian                           
    Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
    Indian Institute of Science
    B A N G A L O R E   560 012
    Ph: +91-80-3942505
        +91-80-3600450
    Fax:+91-80-3600865
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