Chapter 4. Plotting
Plotting support is only available in the graphical GNOME version. All plotting accessible from the graphical interface is available from the Create Plot window. You can access this window by either clicking on the Plot button on the toolbar or selecting Plot from the Calculator menu. You can also access the plotting functionality by using the plotting functions of the GEL language. See Chapter 5 to find out how to enter expressions that Genius understands.
4.1. Line Plots
To graph real valued functions of one variable open the Create Plot
window. You can also use the
LinePlot function
on the command line (see its documentation).
Once you click the Plot button, a window opens up with some notebooks in it. You want to be in the Function line plot notebook tab, and inside you want to be on the Functions / Expressions notebook tab. See Figure 4-1.
Into the text boxes just type in expressions where x is the independent variable. You can also just give names of functions such as cos rather then having to type cos(x). You can graph up to ten functions. If you make a mistake and Genius cannot parse the input it will signify this with a warning icon on the right of the text input box where the error occurred, as well as giving you an error dialog. You can change the ranges of the dependent and independent variables in the bottom part of the dialog. Pressing the Plot button produces the graph shown in Figure 4-2.
From here you can print out the plot, create encapsulated postscript or a PNG version of the plot or change the zoom. If the dependent axis was not set correctly you can have Genius fit it by finding out the extrema of the graphed functions.
For plotting using the command line see the documentation of the
LinePlot function.