A User's Guide to the Pmw.Blt Plotting Tool
BLT Graph is a highly configurable plotting library for
2D graphs written in Tcl.
A Python interface to BLT Graph is available through a
Python megawidget called
Pmw.Blt.
The original documentation of BLT Graph was written for
Tcl programmers (see e.g. the
BLT home page or G. A. Howlett's
chapter 7 in M. Harrison (ed): Tcl/Tk Tools,
O'Reilly, 1997). The purpose of
this manual is to document the usage of BLT Graph
in a Python context.
We recommend you to
download the entire HTML document and associated
scripts for local browsing. There is also rough PostScript version of the document.
The present document is divided into three parts. The first part
demonstrates the power of BLT Graph. If you are used to
plotting programs like Gnuplot, Matlab, or Maple, you should really take
a look at the possibilities offered by an interactive widget such as Pmw.Blt.
The second part is a tutorial were the most important features
like grids, legends, axes, colors, symbols, smoothing etc. are explained.
The third part contains
a complete reference describing all methods and arguments
available in the Python interface to BLT Graph.
Note: Pmw.Blt is aimed at programmers, that is, you
can only make graphs by writing Python statements.
This is actually the strength of Pmw.Blt; you can embed
interactive curve plotting in your own scientific applications
and tailor the plotting functionality to your specific needs.
The present guide contains numerous examples that help you get
started quickly.
Demos
The following list of Python programs are examples on Pmw.Blt used in this documentation. Some people prefer to jump directly into running codes rather than reading tutorials and manuals, so if you are one of those, have fun! You can copy the source codes from the browser into an editor, save the text in a file, and execute the file under Python (of course, this requires that you have installed Python with the Pmw and BLT packages).
 Hello World (1) | The simplest possible example (view result) |
 Hello World (2) | A more reuseable Hello World program |
 Hello BLT | Demonstrates animation++ with a GUI (view result) |
 Hello User | Demonstrates how to make a user-friendly GUI (view result) |
| Hello Magnifier | Demonstrates interactive zooming (in and out) |
| Hello Weights | Demonstrates the use of weights (view result) |
| Hello Waves | Simulate the motion of a guitar string (view result) |
| Hello Waves (extended) | An extended version of the previous example |
| Hello Graph | Demonstrates all methods in the graph part |
| Hello Elements | Demonstrates all methods for elements (curves) |
| Hello Axes | Demonstrates all methods for configuring axes |
| Hello Grid | Demonstrates all methods for specifying a grid |
| Hello Legends | Demonstrates all methods related to legends |
| Hello Crosshairs | Demonstrates all methods related to crosshairs |
| Hello Pens | Demonstrates all methods related to pens |
| Hello Postscript | Demonstrates all methods for creating postscript |
| Hello Markers | Demonstrates all methods related to markers |
