AIPS HELP file for PLCOLORS in 31DEC24

As of Thu Sep 12 13:05:55 2024

HELP SECTION

PLCOLORS
Type:     Adverb   (Array (3,10))
Use:      Plot programs draw lines and symbols of different
          categories.  They are also able to draw "dark" as well as
          "bright" versions of these line/symbol categories.  The dark
          ones are normally drawn to provide contrast when the
          background grey-scale image is strong.  DOCOLOR is used to
          control whether PLCOLORS is used or ignored.  The first axis
          is red-green-blue in that order, while the second is used to
          select line type (or something else).

          The line types are:
          Bright
            1  Border lines, tick marks, internal character labels
            2  Contours, model lines
            3  Polarization vectors
            4  Stars (incl labels), symbols
          Dark
            5  internal character labels
            6  Contours, model lines
            7  Polarization vectors
            8  Stars (incl labels), symbols
          Other
            9  Character labels outside the plot area
           10  Overall background

          Procedure TVCOLORS will set PLCOLORS to those values
          currently set for your TV display.  Procedure DEFCOLOR will
          set PLCOLORS to the default XAS colors (with or without an
          actual XAS running).  To use less ink, procedure OKCOLORS
          sets PLCOLORS to a contrasting set of colors plus a white
          background.

          LWPLA defaults (when DOCOLOR=-1; _NOT_ when DOCOLOR=1,
          PLCOLORS=0), when the image is not in color, PLCOLORS
          or 1-4 and 9 to 0.0 and 5-8 and 10 to 1.0.  When the
          "grey-scale" image is colored, the defaults change to
          1-5 and 10 to 1.0 and 6-9 to 0.0.

          The default line type is 1 and many tasks still use only
          that.

          This adverb is ideal to use with the tilda(~) continuation
          command.
             Example:  Say you want to make an image with white
                       bright contours, red dark contours, yellow
                       bright polarization vectors, and pink character
                       labels on a dark green background, then you
                       should type:
                          > plcolors(1,2)~ 1  1  1
                          > plcolors(1,6)~ 1  0  0
                          > plcolors(1,3)~ 1  1  0
                          > plcolors(1,9)~ 1  0.3  0.5
                          > plcolors(1,10)~ 0.1  0.5  0.1

Tasks:
  LAYER.......Task to create an RGB image from multiple images.
              PLCOLORS gives the color to use for up to 10 input
              images.
  LWPLA.......Convert a plot file to PostScript for saving and/or
              printing.  When DOCOLOR is > 0, the PLCOLORS adverb
              controls the coloring of the 4 bright and 4 dark line
              types plus the external characters and the overall
              background.
Procedures:
  DEFCOLOR....Sets adverb PLCOLORS to match a default XAS TV.
  OKCOLORS....Sets adverb PLCOLORS to use less ink (white background).
  TVCOLORS....Sets adverb PLCOLORS to match current TV usage.

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