PGPLOT

Article summary

PGPLOT is a device-independent graphics subroutine library written starting in 1983 by Tim Pearson, a professor at the California Institute of Technology. PGPLOT is written mostly in FORTRAN with a modular output API that allows output to several dozen types of plotting device. PGPLOT has been widely used in the academic and scientific communities, because it provides both low-level (glyph, point, line, and area) plotting primitives and also high-level facilities for drawing graphs. PGPLOT may be redistributed to third parties and modified, but only in binary form. Neither the original nor modified source code are allowed to be redistributed. The most recent version of PGPLOT is 5.2.2, released in February 2001, although third parties have written unofficial patches that include support for additional devices, 64 bit systems, and RGB (true color) plotting. PGPLOT provides C and Fortran 77 interface. There are also several user-contributed bindings, such as C++, perl, python, ruby and tcl/tk. PGPLOT includes device-independent output to many devices including several types of image file, graphics display terminals and plotters, PostScript devices, and X Window. Interactive devices can be used to deliver numeric parameters to the controlling program via a graphics cursor.…

Key claims

1. release date: 2001 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. The record states that the release date is "2001". What evidence would count against this claim?
3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1358796224