XMM-Newton Science Analysis System


dstoplot (dsplot-1.27) [xmmsas_20230412_1735-21.0.0]

Description

The task will convert a dal table into a format that can be read with the interactive plotting program Grace. The user can specify the name of the table, the name of the $x$ column and a list of $y$ column names. When Grace reads the output of this task it will produce a plot of the specified curves, one curve for each $y$ column as a function of the $x$ column. The plot is titled with the name of the set and the name of the table. The $x$ axis is labeled with the name and units of the $x$ column. If there is only one $y$ column, the $y$ axis is labeled with the name and units of this $y$ column; if there are multiple $y$ columns then a legend is added. The user can subsequently process the data and customize the plot using the graphical interface of Grace. The task dsplot conveniently combines the two steps: It generates a plot file using dstoplot and then automatically invokes Grace on it.

A second distinct functionality of dstoplot is the ability to plot abscissa data ranges as horizontal markers given as values stored in separate tables. These range markers can be plotted separately or overlaid onto a collection of plotted data curves. A practical example is to plot one or several Good-Time-Interval sets together with a time-series data set or visualize the result of a GTI-merging process (see e.g. gtimerge).

Please note: Only numerical and boolean columns can be plotted where in the latter case true translates to 1 and false to 0. Vector columns are supported - see description of parameter y for details.

On the command line the dstoplot task is typically applied like this:
dstoplot table=test.dat:some > tmp.grace && xmgrace tmp.grace