SPLOT Working Principles

The plotter simulation consists in interpreting plotter instructions contained in a disk file. The SPLOT program reads these instructions from the file and plots them on the screen of the computer in the same way as the plotter would do on paper. The file is plotted in the rectangular drawing area which represents the plotting paper of the plotter. The boundaries of this drawing area normally correspond to the hard clip limits of the plotter (i. e., to the physical limits in which a plotter pen can move for the selected paper size - see the Paper Size dialog and the Paper Size topics). If the Trim function is used, only the chosen plotting area is displayed in this drawing area.

In the Microsoft Windows environment the size of the drawing area can differ from the size of the client area. If any dimension of the client area is larger than those of the drawing area, the superfluous area of the client area is gray colored. The color of the drawing area (paper) is always white.

If any dimension of the client area is smaller than those of the drawing area, one or two scroll bars appear on the edge of the client area, which allow you to scroll through the contents of the drawing area.

Use the Resize menu command to cause the equality of the client and drawing areas. This equality is maintained automatically if the Dynamically Resize item in the Options menu is checked.

If the  Proportional Aspect Ratio item in the Options menu is checked, the aspect ratio of the drawing area is maintained to be identical to the original aspect ratio of the corresponding plotting area. Otherwise there can be any aspect ratio of the drawing area which can lead to the deformation of the image.