Specifications and subfields
In many operations activated by ESC or a double-click of the mouse,
additional information may be entered by means of extra specifications
having the form
<keyword>=<list_of_parameters>
and written in the same edit field within the current text.
For example, in PLOT operation specifications HOME=200,0 and SIZE=300,300
specify the home and the size of the graph.
If some extra specification is not given by the user, certain default
values will be used depending on the current operation and other extra
specifications.
The order of the extra specifications is immaterial. However, if the
same <keyword> appears with = several times in the current edit field,
the order of selection will be:
1) the first one on the current line
2) the first one in the edit field (current subfield).
To avoid confusions with neighbouring operations and their specifica-
tions, special border lines of the form *.......... (asterisk in the
control column followed by at least 10 dots) may be used to separate
different operations and computational schemes. The search for the extra
specifications is always limited to the current subfield (ie. to the
lines between the nearest border lines from the current position).
The first subfield in the edit field can be used as a common source
for extra specifications by writing *GLOBAL* on some line in it.
Then the effective specifications will be selected in the following
precedence order:
1) current line
2) current subfield
3) *GLOBAL* subfield (must be the first subfield)
4) default value of the specification
*GLOBAL* subfield is useful especially when several related actions
(like PLOT operations with a similar structure) are defined in one edit
field.
SPECS specification is a new option from ver. 3.26 (SPECS?)
Long specifications may be written on several consecutive lines by using
& as a terminator for intermediate lines.
For example,
XSCALE=0,0.001,0.002,0.003,&
0.005,0.007,1
is equivalent to
XSCALE=0,0.001,0.002,0.003,0.005,0.007,1
The maximum length of text in those specifications is 999 characters.
Symbolic or brief notations for specifications (*specifications)
To avoid repetition of long specification texts in related plotting schemes
etc., symbolic notations with an `*' as the leading character
can be used as shown in the following example:
................................................................................
*one_cycle=[BLACK][line_width(1)],-pi:-pi,0,pi:pi pi=3.141592653589793
*from-1to1=[BLACK][line_width(1)],-1(0.5)1
*red_thick=[RED][line_width(5)]
GPLOT Y(X)=SIN(X)
XSCALE=*one_cycle YSCALE=*from-1to1
LINETYPE=*red_thick
................................................................................
It is typical to place *specifications in the *GLOBAL* subfield so that
any of them are easily available in various subfields.
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