Super Mongo @ Notre Dame

A registered copy of Super Mongo (SM) -- an excellent graphing program well-liked by astronomers -- is available over the Notre Dame network. The currently installed version is 2_4_6p1. The installed version currently only supports X11 not Tk or IMAGEN.

How to use SM

Once your .cshrc sources the astro.csh file, all you need to do is type "sm" to launch the program. You may wish to create your own ".sm" file as described below.

Create a ".sm" File in Home Directory

I highly suggest you create a `.sm' file in your home directory, which contains initialization commands. [If you have a ".sm" file and frequently switch between platforms, you'll have to manually change redhat to ssun or vice versa in that file depending on the current platform. This is annoying but there's no way around it. If you come up with an easy way to handle this dynamically, let me know.] I suggest using one of the following ".sm" files:

For Redhat:
fonts            /afs/nd.edu/user34/iraf/sm/redhat/lib/sm/fonts.bin
TeX_strings      1
history_file     .smhist
history          80
device           x11 -bg black -fg white
temp_dir         /tmp/
filecap          /afs/nd.edu/user34/iraf/sm/redhat/lib/sm/filecap
graphcap         /afs/nd.edu/user34/iraf/sm/redhat/lib/sm/graphcap
help             /afs/nd.edu/user34/iraf/sm/redhat/lib/sm/help/
macro            /afs/nd.edu/user34/iraf/sm/redhat/lib/sm/macro/
For Solaris:
fonts            /afs/nd.edu/user34/iraf/sm/ssun/lib/sm/fonts.bin
TeX_strings      1
history_file     .smhist
history          80
device           x11 -bg black -fg white
temp_dir         /tmp/
filecap          /afs/nd.edu/user34/iraf/sm/ssun/lib/sm/filecap
graphcap         /afs/nd.edu/user34/iraf/sm/ssun/lib/sm/graphcap
help             /afs/nd.edu/user34/iraf/sm/ssun/lib/sm/help/
macro            /afs/nd.edu/user34/iraf/sm/ssun/lib/sm/macro/

NOTE: For the third line above, you may want to specify an absolute path to a .smhist file, e.g. `history_file /afs/nd.edu/user10/joeuser/.smhist'. Of course, make sure you use your own directory. Doing this prevents Super Mongo from creating .smhist files in every directory that you start the program. Instead, it uses a "master" .smhist file.

Example plot

In Super Mongo, you store data in a file and then use another text file to define your plot. This file reads in the data and displays it.

Make a file called `mydata.dat' containing:

1 1 1
2 4 8
3 9 27
4 16 64
5 25 125
6 36 216
7 49 343
8 64 512

Make a file called `plot.sm' containing the stuff in gray. Comments explaining what each line does are on the right:

plot
	DATA "mydata.dat"
	LINES 3 100
	READ i 1
	READ { ii 2 iii 3 }
	LIMITS i ii
	BOX
	PTYPE 4 0
	CTYPE yellow
	POINTS i ii
	CONNECT i ii
	CTYPE white
	XLABEL This is i
	YLABEL This is ii
 # States macro name (note all other lines are indented with tabs)
 # Specify desired datafile
 # Choose which lines to use
 # Read column 1 into `i'
 # Read column 2 into `ii' and 3 into `iii'
 # Choose limits, based on i and ii
 # Draw the axes
 # Choose square point markers
 # Change color to yellow
 # Plot i against ii
 # and connect the points
 # Change color to white
 # Label the X-axis
 # Label the Y-axis

Display the plot with `sm -m plot.sm' from the command line.

External Links

Super Mongo's Home Site