GENPLOT is a generic plotting package that is particularly useful for presenting and analyzing scientific research data. The program itself is written in ANSI standard C as a callable subroutine and is therefore available for incorporation into other user-written programs. It provides powerful, user friendly graphics capabilities with minimal programming effort. In addition, using a very simple shell (Appendix S) GENPLOT can be configured as a standalone program. This is how you have received it. In this form, a user may make X-Y graphs (no pie charts allowed - this is for scientists, not managers), plot data and simulation curves, transform the data in various ways, and later spruce up the plots for publication.
GENPLOT has been written over a number of years at Cornell University with input from numerous people, including Larry Doolittle, Rick Cochran and Mike Heisler. Mike Thompson must, however unfortunately, take responsibility for its current gross and unmanageable size. Users over the years have alternately blessed GENPLOT's capabilities and vehemently cursed its author for the lack of up-to-date written documentation. Now, hopefully, this manual will introduce the new user to the program while giving power users the detailed reference information needed.
One warning about the author. I am often accused of having absolutely zero patience with computers - the answer must be available immediately with minimal fuss but maximal flexibility. These requirements are mutually exclusive with an overly `friendly' user interface a la Macintosh. Although the program works well for Macintosh users, the program is primarily designed for a power user who types well and thinks at least three or four commands ahead of the screen. Pull down and full screen menus are too slow and hence most of the user interaction is through that old fashioned, non high tech, computer keyboard. Learn to enjoy typing things like abbrev max pow of progs and min typ which means abbreviations maximize the power of programs and minimize typing.