XPLOT(1) BSD General Commands Manual XPLOT(1)NAMExplot — fast tool to graph and visualize lots of data
SYNOPSISxplot [-v] [-x] [-y] [-tile] [-mono] [-1] [-d display | -display display]
[-d2 display] file [files...]
DESCRIPTIONxplot is a fast visualization tool for examining multiple data sets in
parallel plots. It supports easy zoom-in and zoom-out capabilities, and
synchronized views into multiple data sets (with the -x, -y, and -tile
options).
OPTIONS-1 allows one to look at multiple data sets, one at a time. This changes
the behavior of click-right and shift-click-right from exiting and print‐
ing to cycling forward and backward through the various plots.
-d display, -display display, -d2 display, all select which display(s) on
which to draw the graphs.
-mono causes the graph(s) to be drawn in black and white, with no use of
color.
-tile allows one to look at multiple data sets in parallel. The plots
will each consume 1/nth of the vertical space that would have been used
with one plot. This works well if the window manager refrains from wast‐
ing pixels with decorative tabs and respects the hints that xplot pro‐
vides.
-v prints the version number.
-x causes several graphs to be synchronized on the X-axis (zooming in one
window zooms all the others, with the same portion of the X-axis on dis‐
play). The Y-axis of the other graphs will be autoscaled to fit the
data.
-y causes several graphs to be synchronized on the Y-axis (zooming in one
window zooms all the others, with the same portion of the Y-axis on dis‐
play).
USE OF MOUSE BUTTONS
When running xplot, the mouse may be used to zoom in and out on data.
Dragging with the left mouse button depressed while inside the axes of
the graph draws a rubber-band box around the area to be replotted in the
existing window.
Dragging with the left mouse button depressed while outside the axes
(below the X-axis or to the left of the Y-axis) selects the range of the
axis to plot. In effect, this is like the previous mechanism, but only
zooming on one axis.
Dragging with the middle mouse button inside the axes pans the graph; the
start-drag position ends up being at the end-drag position. Dragging on
the axes pans only in one dimension.
Clicking the left mouse button zooms out to the previous view. One can
zoom in multiple times, then back up through each view. Panning loca‐
tions are not saved.
Clicking the right mouse button exits the program.
Shift-clicking on the mouse buttons produces Postscript files with the
same axis extents as the current view. Shift-left produces a full-page
view. Shift-middle produces a squarish plot, and shift-right a plot such
that three of them fit on a page of LaTeX.
PLOT LANGUAGE
There are several example files demo.0, demo.1, demo.2, etc., stored with
the xplot sources. demo.0 lists all the commands.
xplot demo.0
demonstrates xplot's capabilities.
USE WITH TCPDUMP
The command
tcpdump -tt -S ... > tcpdump.out
saves a tcpdump formatted output trace to tcpdump.out. The -tt and -S
flags tell tcpdump to print an unformatted timestamp and to use absolute
TCP sequence numbers.
This trace can then be examined by being processed with tcpdump2xplot.
tcpdump -plot tcpdump.out
SEE ALSOtcpdump2xplot(1),
HISTORY
The xplot command was written by Tim Shepard as a tool to use in his
analysis of TCP performance while at MIT. Some features were added by
Andrew Heybey and Greg Troxel.
BUGS
Some people may not like that the right mouse button exits without con‐
firmation, although others consider it a feature that enables rapidly
viewing hundreds of similar plots.
Should use standard X geometry specifications.
BSD 27 January 1999 BSD
