UNIX/IRAF Site Manager's Guide

UNIX/IRAF Site Manager's Guide

4. Graphics and Image Display

IRAF is device and window system independent, and can be used with any windowing system such as X11, or with hardware graphics and display devices. Today most people will run IRAF on a UNIX workstation under some X11-based desktop such as CDE or fvwm95. The X11IRAF support package, which includes the xgterm and ximtool programs for graphics and imaging, is system independent and is distributed separately from IRAF. IRAF can also be used with other graphics and image display servers, e.g. xterm, SAOtng, and SAOimage. The x11iraf utilities are available from the IRAF network archives or by contacting IRAF site support.

Most people will prefer to use xgterm and ximtool (or a similar display tool such as saoimage) for IRAF graphics and imaging. xgterm is based on xterm, providing an equivalent vt100 (text window) capability but a much enhanced graphics capability. ximtool provides a general interactive image display capability, including support for multiple image frame buffers and frame blinking, independent zoom, pan, and color enhancement for each frame, and many other features. Both programs are implemented at the host level as general purpose window system tools, and are useful independently of IRAF. Detailed documentation on the basic operation and use of these programs is available with the X11IRAF distribution. Our concern in this document is with the use of these programs with IRAF.