DISLIN General-Purpose Scientific and
Engineering Plotting Library w/Smith Chart
Cool Product Report

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Dr. Scott Best, of SiberSci RF engineering services, sent information about the FREE general purpose DISLIN scientific and engineering plotting software library that includes Smith Chart support. The graphics library was initially created at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research beginning in 1985 by Mr. Helmut Michels. Its continual series of upgrades is as recent as May 2020. The DISLIN library is available for Unix, Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Mac OSX, and MS-DOS systems. It supports a variety of public domain and commercial compilers for Go, Perl, Python, Java, Ruby, TCL, Julia, FreeBASIC, Free Pascal, R, C/C++, and Fortran (77, 90, and 95).

If you are a software developer, you probably know that most development platforms are supplied with either no plotting components or very rudimentary versions of for-purchase products. Many cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. While there is hesitation to incorporate open source (i.e., free) software into commercial products, DISLIN's 35 year history of successful users is de facto validation of its integrity. You might want to give it a look.

DISLIN graph plotting software. Click here for examples.

From the DISLIN Overview web page:

"DISLIN is a high level library of subroutines and functions that display data graphically. It is intended to be a powerful and easy to use software package for programmers and scientists that does not require knowledge of hardware features. The software is available for the programming languages C/C++, Fortran 77 and Fortran 90/95. For some operating systems, the languages Perl, Python, Java, Ruby, Tcl, Julia, R, FreeBASIC, Free Pascal and the C/C++ interpreter Ch are also supported.

DISLIN can display graphic information directly on graphic terminals or store them in metafiles. The supported display types are VGA, X Windows, Windows API and OpenGL. The supported file formats are GKSLIN, CGM, HPGL, PostScript, PDF, WMF, SVG, PNG, BMP, PPM, GIF and TIFF. DISLIN metafiles can either be printed on various devices using the DISLIN driver program DISDRV or imported into third party products such as TeX and MS Word.

The library contains the following features:

DISLIN graphics plotting library manual. Click here for the online user's manual.

9 software fonts where each font provides 6 alphabets. PostScript fonts for PostScript, PDF and SVG output, X11 fonts for X terminals and TrueType fonts for Windows displays and WMF files can also be used. The different aphabets contain Roman, Greek, Russian, mathematical and special European characters. TeX instructions can be used for plotting mathematical formulas. Plotting of two- and three-dimensional axis systems. Axes can be linearly or logarithmically scaled and labeled with linear, logarithmic, time, date, map and user-defined formats. Plotting of curves. Several curves can appear in one axis system and can be differentiated by colour, line style and pattern. Multiple axis system can be displayed on a page. Plotting of legends. Elementary plot routines for lines, vectors and outlined or filled regions such as rectangles, circles, arcs, ellipses and polygons. Shielded regions can be defined. Business graphics. 3-D colour graphics. 3-D graphics. Elementary image routines. Geographical projections and plotting of maps. Contouring. Graphical user interface (GUI) routines based on Motif and Windows API functions.

Manuals in English are available in the online help of DISLIN, or can be downloaded in HTML format.

A printed book of DISLIN can be ordered from the publisher, or directly from the author.

DSLIN General-Purpose Scientific and Engineering Plotting Library that Includes Smith Charts

About DISLIN

In July 1985 I [Helmut Michels] changed my job from a small institute at the University of Göttingen to the computer center of the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy in Katlenburg-Lindau which is renamed to Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in July 2004. One of my first tasks at the institute in Lindau was the creating of 3-D colour plots from data of the experiment PICCA on the probe GIOTTO. I ported a collection of plotting routines written by me at the university to a Perkin Elmer machine with a Ramtek colour graphics system and released it as DISLIN 1.0. The name DISLIN is an abbreviation for Device-Independent Software Lindau. Here is a short summary of all DISLIN releases.

Contact Info

Helmut Michels

Dislin Software

Am Hachweg 10 37083

Göttingen, Germany

Phone:  +49 551 29348389

E-Mail:  michels@dislin.de

Web:  www.dislin.de

About SiberSci LLC

SiberSci, LLC provides clients with comprehensive short-term and long-term Electromagnetic Engineering Services that are customized to satisfy their individual technical requirements and time constraints. To determine if SiberSci, LLC can be of assistance to your company, please provide Dr. Scott Best with a detailed description of the work to be performed along with a schedule, and SiberSci, LLC will provide a budgetary quotation for the services that are required to fulfill the stated technical requirements. A Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is readily available to protect the business-sensitive information, intellectual property, and proprietary information for each client to ensure their information is protected and not compromised.

Contact Info

Dr. Scott Best

SiberSci, LLC

Lake Forest Drive

Owensboro, KY  42303

Phone:  1-270-228-4901

E-E-Mail:  scott_best@sibersci.com

Web:  sibersci.com

Posted June 1, 2020