forums.silverfrost.com

DavidButland · Joined: 15 Jun 2014 Posts: 2 Location: Bridlington

Hello, world.
I very sensibly married Judy Butland in 1964. Judy developed Simpleplot in 1974 at the University of Bradford, UK.
We were AMAZED to find people still talking about Simpleplot in 2014.
We are now well into our happy retirement in Bridlington, E Riding of Yorkshire, and the Centre of the Universe.
We will help with Simpleplot problems if we can, but can promise nothing. It was all a long time ago.
Meanwhile, we are helping 2 local school students develop BridPlot - an Android app for graphing. See www.bussmk2.co.uk for more details.
BrodPlot is "Designed by School Students in the UK for School Students all over the world". If anyone has any contacts with schools in Foreign Parts, we would love to hear from them.
If any old Simpleplot uses who still remember us are out there, get in touch.
David Butland

DanRRight · Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2014 3:22 pm Post subject:

Dear David,

That was great news to meet you here in good mood and spirit! I do not know how many times we discussed here Simpleplot with all the regrets that you are not responding on emails because of your retirement. The feeling of serious loss was always the main theme. Please do not disappear and keep in touch with this group. Things are that time came to make for Simpleplot needed facelift and make some other fixes. I looked at your BrodPlot and was thinking that it is exactly what Simpleplot currently needs - to be both Simple and Pro, not just simple.

Besides i hope also that Windows tablets and cellphones will be next where this Fortran will be used so it would be great to see BrodPlot ported to Windows and able to communicate with Fortran.

Wish you all the best and a lot of fruitful communications with this one of the most friendly and caring communities on the web.

DanRRight · Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2014 10:08 am Post subject:

I am mostly interested with quick plot function %pl which we discussed at the beginning of this thread. What needs to be fixed urgently there is
1) fonts
2) tick marks
3) real*8 for graphics
4) fix %pl numerous inconsistencies and bugs (like simpleplot_redraw@, inconsistency of using real*4 vs real*8 for max and min while using real*8 for everything else etc) adjustments of drawing surface to get scalable borders instead of fixed etc

Most of all if compiler developers have no access to the graphics library source code and the rights for its modification like it was so far then Simpleplot (or any other third part software) has no future because of a lot of adjustments and modifications are needed permanently and each user has own preferences. May be even better is to grant access to sources for everyone like it is the case with many other graphics packages but that is debatable. When i found that Silverfrost developers can not fix with %pl anything i stopped using it and not without regret switched to my own library made with FTN95 graphics functions. I lost a lot of time but you can see the screenshots above -- obtained plotting quality and freedom was worth of that time loss. I still admit that design principles of %pl and Simpleplot and their integration into FTN95 are better then mine, because i am not a professional programmer. If Simpleplot major defects will be fixed and appearance substantially improved (which based on my experience is really really easy, i hope) i may start using it again.

If that will be solved next would be expansion of options for %pl to allow it draw a lot more and better with the same ease. That may take many users and years to do. But if done right Clearwin will be used indefinitely, scientific plotting will be need in year 3000 too, and simplicity is its key principle, am i wrong? LOL

Other users have interest in the whole Simpleplot package. It also needs improvements and adjustments to look more modern. Most of fixes (again, using modern fonts and their positioning relative to tics, real*8 numbering, labeling, using RGB colors and better looking palettes etc) could be done pretty fast. The reason to switch to real*8 numbers is because that allows to get much less amount of annoying crashes of graphics, since it is pretty rare when you get numbers more or less then 1e300 or 1e-300 while this permanently happen with real*4 numbers

DanRRight · Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2014 2:48 am Post subject:

Remember the Simpleplot hack our forum guys uncovered which fixes tick marks?

I got strange error which looks like this when i open same program twice(no matter where in the computer)

Any guess what that could be?

Here is the code for debugging. Run one exe and then not closing it run the another

aebolzan · Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 5:18 pm Post subject:

I was testing your program and seems that the problem is with %pl. I have tried a modified version of it:

DanRRight · Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2014 11:07 pm Post subject:

Thanks Agustin. yes, would be nice if Silverfrost will get some sort of new collaboration with D.Butland or even his school students who made amazingly good graphics utility for Android which costs just a dollar on Google Play OR l get the ability to edit the source code.

Otherwise the Simpleplot is dead.

DanRRight · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2014 6:17 am Post subject:

John,
Good that you have noticed the typo/bug, but good is that %pl is resistant to it. Still attempt to run any second code with %pl crashes it.

DanRRight · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2014 10:17 am Post subject:

I'd also appreciate if our Simpleplot hacks Smile

solved one more its problem which makes it an FUglyplot: fonts for LOG scale's exponent. Here is how moronic looks scientific numbering right now: the exponent font is taken as way way too small even after i increased all font sizes. Can you guys fix it with some workaround?

aebolzan · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2014 2:12 pm Post subject:

within the limitations of Simpleplot (till Silverfrost contacts David Butland...), the size of the fonts can be changed by means of the proper font used (chset(?) subroutine) or the size of the font (textmg (?) subroutine). I do not remember where I put the following program in the forums, but I resend it here as it will be faster for you to see it. As you will see, CHSET above 20 gives you a larger exponent font.....

DanRRight · Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 9:30 am Post subject:

Agustin,
I forgot to mention that this has to be within %pl, I do not use full Simpleplot till it will be fixed and sources controlled by Silverfrost or users (sources opened).

Here is the demo for simplicity (why it produces zero size file "messages.txt" by the way?)

aebolzan · Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 1:57 pm Post subject:

Dan: are you using the Hershey fonts?....I get a nice plot from your code with a not so small exponent numbers......but I setup the Hershey fonts as I explained some messages up in this topic.....and if all runs well, you should produce as part of the Simpleplot output a file named MESSAGES.TXT containing a single line: "(SIMPLEPLOT Mark 2-15(015)D)"......this file, as far as I remember, provides information about the run of the Simpleplot subroutines....

If you already have the Simpleplot.ini file in the Windows folder and the Hershey.dat file in the same folder of Simple.dll, well.....then there is a problem......try to change the numbers in the call "call chset(10)", for instance to 20, and see what happens...if you still observe the same font, it means that the Hershey fonts were not installed in your system. With CHSET(10) you should get a slanted font....is this your case?

By the way (I didn't see the last message because I was writting mine), colour=#CC8800 works fine for me: I get some kind of light brown curve...is this correct?

Agustin

DanRRight · Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2014 9:34 am Post subject:

No, i do not see any files called Hershey on my computer.

IanLambley · Joined: 17 Dec 2006 Posts: 506 Location: Sunderland

Dan,
I've just located an old version of the hershy files and uploaded them to:

norsoftdev.com/hershey.fnt
norsoftdev.com/hershey.htm

These are dated 12-May-1995 and 31-Jan-2002 respectively.

REgards
Ian

aebolzan · Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2014 1:46 pm Post subject:

I suspected that!....Dan, please, go to the very first message of this topic. There you will see my instructions about how to install them and four or five messages below, you will see a message from Paul that indicates where to find the hershey.dat file as a zip file. Once you have installed them, let us know if you eventually get what you want (or at least more or less what you want considering the limitations of Simpleplot....).

Agustin

DanRRight · Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2014 10:50 pm Post subject:

I changes few hard drives lately and may lost hershey if I installed it (do not remember exactly, plus I was very reluctant to do that, Hershey never looked very good before, only deep despise of utterly bad Simpleplot %pl look which smells like DOS 1.1 may pushed me). The 7.1 definitely does not install that by default. The hack with not centered tic marks worked satisfactory without hershey. If better quality was needed i edited fonts, titles and axis marks by hand but was tired to do that lately with LOG scale. Will see what this new hack gives...thanks.

Meantime, can you post on Postimage dot org or other photo posting place screnshot of axis look from my program above?

How to remove creation of file MESSAGE.TXT? It either crashes %pl or after installing Hershey does not allow second instance of the code to run.

Update: something is still wrong. Changing font from 1 to 20 does not change anything a slightest bit. Same font.