Provided by: stilts_3.4.9-5_all 
NAME
stilts-plot2time - Draws a time plot
SYNOPSIS
stilts plot2time [xpix=<int-value>] [ypix=<int-value>] [insets=<top>,<left>,<bottom>,<right>]
[omode=swing|out|cgi|discard|auto] [storage=simple|memory|disk|policy|cache|basic-
cache|persistent|parallel] [seq=<suffix>[,...]] [legend=true|false]
[legborder=true|false] [legopaque=true|false] [legseq=<suffix>[,...]]
[legpos=<xfrac,yfrac>] [title=<value>] [auxmap=<map-name>|<color>-<color>[-<color>...]]
[auxclip=<lo>,<hi>] [auxflip=true|false] [auxquant=<number>]
[auxfunc=log|linear|histogram|histolog|sqrt|square|acos|cos] [auxmin=<number>]
[auxmax=<number>] [auxlabel=<text>] [auxcrowd=<factor>] [auxwidth=<pixels>]
[auxvisible=true|false] [forcebitmap=true|false] [compositor=0..1] [animate=<table>]
[afmt=<in-format>] [astream=true|false] [acmd=<cmds>] [parallel=<int-value>]
[ylog=true|false] [yflip=true|false] [tlabel=<text>] [ylabel=<text>] [t2func=<time-
expr>] [y2func=<function-of-y>] [t2label=<text>] [y2label=<text>] [grid=true|false]
[tcrowd=<number>] [ycrowd=<number>] [tformat=iso-8601|year|mjd|unix] [minor=true|false]
[shadow=true|false] [gridcolor=<rrggbb>|red|blue|...] [gridtrans=0..1]
[texttype=plain|antialias|latex] [fontsize=<int-value>] [fontstyle=standard|serif|mono]
[fontweight=plain|bold|italic|bold_italic] [tmin=<year-or-iso8601>] [tmax=<year-or-
iso8601>] [tsub=<lo>,<hi>] [ymin=<number>] [ymax=<number>] [ysub=<lo>,<hi>]
[navaxes=t|y|ty] [zoomfactor=<number>] [leglabelN=<text>] [layerN=<layer-type> <layerN-
specific-params>] [zoneN=<text>]
DESCRIPTION
plot2time draws plots where the horizontal axis represents time. The time axis can be labelled in various
different ways including MJD, decimal year and ISO-8601 form.
Positional coordinates are specified as t, y pairs, with an optional ttype specifier to indicate how the
input value is to be interpreted, e.g.: plot2time in1=series.fits layer1=line t1=EPOCH ttype1=MJD y1=EN‐
ERGY
Time values can be represented in various ways in input data, for instance as Julian Day, Modified Julian
Date, decimal years since 0AD, Unix seconds, ISO-8601, or variants of some of the above with additional
offsets. In some cases the input format contains enough metadata to determine how the values should be
mapped to a common timescale (so for instance they can be plotted as MJD or Year/Month/Day), and in other
cases they do not. For example CDF files and VOTable 1.4 files with TIMESYS markup contain sufficient
metadata, and text inputs using the ISO-8601 format can usually be identified and understood, but there's
no way to tell automatically whether a numeric column in a CSV file represents MJD, seconds since a known
epoch, decimal years, or anything else. For this reason the ttypeN parameter is provided for all the lay‐
er types with a tN coordinate, as follows:
ttypeN = DecYear|MJD|JD|Unix|Iso8601 (TimeMapper) Selects the form in which the Time value for pa‐
rameter tN is supplied. Options are:
* DecYear: Years since 0 AD
* MJD: Modified Julian Date
* JD: Julian Day
* Unix: Seconds since midnight 1 Jan 1970
* Iso8601: ISO 8601 string
If left blank, a guess will be taken depending on the data type of the value supplied for the tN value.
This command, unlike the other plot2* commands at time of writing, can be used to draw multi-zone plots.
These are plots with different panels stacked vertically so that different datasets can share the same
horizontal (time) axis, but have separate vertical axes, colour maps, legends etc. The horizontal axes
are always synchronized between zones. This is currently controlled with the zoneN parameter. For any
layer with a layer suffix N, you can specify a zone identifier as an arbitrary string, Z, by supplying
the parameter zoneN=Z. Layers with the same value of zoneN are plotted in the same zone, and layers with
different values are plotted in different zones. If no zoneN is given, the layer is assigned to a single
(unnamed) zone, so with no zone parameters specified all plots appear in a single zone. Parameters spe‐
cific to a given zone can then be suffixed with the same Z zone identifier. The examples section illus‐
trates what this looks like in practice.
Note: The multi-zone feature is experimental. As currently implemented it lacks some features. The inter‐
face may be changed in a future version.
Content is added to the plot by specifying one or more plot layers using the layerN parameter. The N part
is a suffix applied to all the parameters affecting a given layer; any suffix (including the empty
string) may be used. Available layers for this plot type are: line, linearfit, mark, fill, quantile,
grid, histogram, kde, knn, densogram, gaussian, yerror, spectrogram, label, function.
OPTIONS
xpix=<int-value>
Size of the output image in the X direction in pixels. This includes space for any axis labels,
padding and other decoration outside the plot area itself. See also insets.
ypix=<int-value>
Size of the output image in the Y direction in pixels. This includes space for any axis labels,
padding and other decoration outside the plot area itself. See also insets.
insets=<top>,<left>,<bottom>,<right>
Defines the amount of space in pixels around the actual plotting area. This space is used for axis
labels, and other decorations and any left over forms an empty border.
The size and position of the actual plotting area is determined by this parameter along with xpix
and ypix.
The value of this parameter is 4 comma separated integers: <top>,<left>,<bottom>,<right>. Any or
all of these values may be left blank, in which case the corresponding margin will be calculated
automatically according to how much space is required.
omode=swing|out|cgi|discard|auto
Determines how the drawn plot will be output, see SUN/256.
* swing: Plot will be displayed in a window on the screen. This plot is "live"; it can be re‐
sized and (except for old-style plots) navigated around with mouse actions in the same way as
plots in TOPCAT.
* out: Plot will be written to a file given by out using the graphics format given by ofmt.
* cgi: Plot will be written in a way suitable for CGI use direct from a web server. The output
is in the graphics format given by ofmt, preceded by a suitable "Content-type" declaration.
* discard: Plot is drawn, but discarded. There is no output.
* auto: Behaves as swing or out mode depending on presence of out parameter
storage=simple|memory|disk|policy|cache|basic-cache|persistent|parallel
Determines the way that data is accessed when constructing the plot. There are two main options,
cached or not. If no caching is used then rows are read sequentially from the specified input ta‐
ble(s) every time they are required. This generally requires a small resource footprint (though
that can depend on how the table is specified) and makes sense if the data only needs to be
scanned once or perhaps if the table is very large. If caching is used then the required data is
read once from the specified input table(s), then prepared and cached before any plotting is per‐
formed, and plots are done using this cached data. This may use a significant amount of storage
for large tables but it's usually more sensible (faster) if the data will need to be scanned mul‐
tiple times. There are various options for cache storage.
The options are:
* simple: no caching, data read directly from input table
* memory: cached to memory; OutOfMemoryError possible for very large plots
* disk: cached to disk
* policy: cached using application-wide default storage policy, which is usually adaptive (memo‐
ry/disk hybrid)
* persistent: cached to persistent files on disk, in the system temporary directory (defined by
system property java.io.tmpdir). If this is used, plot data will be stored on disk in a way
that means they can be re-used between STILTS invocations, so data preparation can be avoided
on subsequent runs. Note however it can leave potentially large files in your temporary direc‐
tory.
* cache: synonym for memory (backward compatibility)
* basic-cache: dumber version of memory (no optimisation for constant-valued columns)
* parallel: experimental version of memory-based cache that reads into the cache in parallel for
large files. This will make the plot faster to prepare, but interaction is a bit slower and
sequence-dependent attributes of the plot may not come out right. This experimental option may
be withdrawn or modified in future releases.
The default value is memory if a live plot is being generated (omode=swing), since in that case
the plot needs to be redrawn every time the user performs plot navigation actions or resizes the
window, or if animations are being produced. Otherwise (e.g. output to a graphics file) the de‐
fault is simple.
seq=<suffix>[,...]
Contains a comma-separated list of layer suffixes to determine the order in which layers are drawn
on the plot. This can affect which symbol are plotted on top of, and so potentially obscure, which
other ones.
When specifying a plot, multiple layers may be specified, each introduced by a parameter layer<N>,
where <N> is a different (arbitrary) suffix labelling the layer, and is appended to all the para‐
meters specific to defining that layer.
By default the layers are drawn on the plot in the order in which the layer* parameters appear on
the command line. However if this parameter is specified, each comma-separated element is inter‐
preted as a layer suffix, giving the ordered list of layers to plot. Every element of the list
must be a suffix with a corresponding layer parameter, but missing or repeated elements are al‐
lowed.
legend=true|false
Whether to draw a legend or not. If no value is supplied, the decision is made automatically: a
legend is drawn only if it would have more than one entry.
legborder=true|false
If true, a line border is drawn around the legend.
legopaque=true|false
If true, the background of the legend is opaque, and the legend obscures any plot components be‐
hind it. Otherwise, it's transparent.
legseq=<suffix>[,...]
Determines which layers are represented in the legend (if present) and in which order they appear.
The legend has a line for each layer label (as determined by the leglabelN parameter). If multiple
layers have the same label, they will contribute to the same entry in the legend, with style icons
plotted over each other. The value of this parameter is a comma-separated sequence of layer suf‐
fixes, which determines the order in which the legend entries appear. Layers with suffixes missing
from this list do not show up in the legend at all.
If no value is supplied (the default), the sequence is the same as the layer plotting sequence
(see seq).
legpos=<xfrac,yfrac>
Determines the internal position of the legend on the plot. The value is a comma-separated pair of
values giving the X and Y positions of the legend within the plotting bounds, so for instance
"0.5,0.5" will put the legend right in the middle of the plot. If no value is supplied, the legend
will appear outside the plot boundary.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. legposZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
title=<value>
Text of a title to be displayed at the top of the plot. If null, the default, no title is shown
and there's more space for the graphics.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. titleZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
auxmap=<map-name>|<color>-<color>[-<color>...]
Color map used for Aux axis shading.
A mixed bag of colour ramps are available as listed in SUN/256: inferno, magma, plasma, viridis,
cividis, cubehelix, sron, rainbow, rainbow2, rainbow3, pastel, cosmic, ember, gothic, rainforest,
voltage, bubblegum, gem, chroma, neon, tropical, accent, gnuplot, gnuplot2, specxby, set1, paired,
hotcold, guppy, iceburn, redshift, pride, rdbu, piyg, brbg, cyan-magenta, red-blue, brg, heat,
cold, light, greyscale, colour, standard, bugn, bupu, orrd, pubu, purd, painbow, huecl, infinity,
hue, intensity, rgb_red, rgb_green, rgb_blue, hsv_h, hsv_s, hsv_v, yuv_y, yuv_u, yuv_v,
scale_hsv_s, scale_hsv_v, scale_yuv_y, mask, blacker, whiter, transparency. Note: many of these,
including rainbow-like ones, are frowned upon by the visualisation community.
You can also construct your own custom colour map by giving a sequence of colour names separated
by minus sign ("-") characters. In this case the ramp is a linear interpolation between each pair
of colours named, using the same syntax as when specifying a colour value. So for instance "yel‐
low-hotpink-#0000ff" would shade from yellow via hot pink to blue.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. auxmapZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
auxclip=<lo>,<hi>
Defines a subrange of the colour ramp to be used for Aux shading. The value is specified as a
(low,high) comma-separated pair of two numbers between 0 and 1.
If the full range 0,1 is used, the whole range of colours specified by the selected shader will be
used. But if for instance a value of 0,0.5 is given, only those colours at the left hand end of
the ramp will be seen.
If the null (default) value is chosen, a default clip will be used. This generally covers most or
all of the range 0-1 but for colour maps which fade to white, a small proportion of the lower end
may be excluded, to ensure that all the colours are visually distinguishable from a white back‐
ground. This default is usually a good idea if the colour map is being used with something like a
scatter plot, where markers are plotted against a white background. However, for something like a
density map when the whole plotting area is tiled with colours from the map, it may be better to
supply the whole range 0,1 explicitly.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. auxclipZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
auxflip=true|false
If true, the colour map on the Aux axis will be reversed.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. auxflipZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
auxquant=<number>
Allows the colour map used for the Aux axis to be quantised. If an integer value N is chosen then
the colour map will be viewed as N discrete evenly-spaced levels, so that only N different colours
will appear in the plot. This can be used to generate a contour-like effect, and may make it easi‐
er to trace the boundaries of regions of interest by eye.
If left blank, the colour map is nominally continuous (though in practice it may be quantised to a
medium-sized number like 256).
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. auxquantZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
auxfunc=log|linear|histogram|histolog|sqrt|square|acos|cos
Defines the way that values in the Aux range are mapped to the selected colour ramp.
The available options are:
* log: Logarithmic scaling
* linear: Linear scaling
* histogram: Scaling follows data distribution, with linear axis
* histolog: Scaling follows data distribution, with logarithmic axis
* sqrt: Square root scaling
* square: Square scaling
* acos: Arccos Scaling
* cos: Cos Scaling
For all these options, the full range of data values is used, and displayed on the colour bar if
applicable. The Linear, Log, Square and Sqrt options just apply the named function to the full da‐
ta range. The histogram options on the other hand use a scaling function that corresponds to the
actual distribution of the data, so that there are about the same number of points (or pixels, or
whatever is being scaled) of each colour. The histogram options are somewhat more expensive, but
can be a good choice if you are exploring data whose distribution is unknown or not well-behaved
over its min-max range. The Histogram and HistoLog options both assign the colours in the same
way, but they display the colour ramp with linear or logarithmic annotation respectively; the His‐
toLog option also ignores non-positive values.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. auxfuncZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
auxmin=<number>
Minimum value of the data coordinate on the Aux axis. This sets the value before any subranging is
applied. If not supplied, the value is determined from the plotted data.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. auxminZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
auxmax=<number>
Maximum value of the data coordinate on the Aux axis. This sets the value before any subranging is
applied. If not supplied, the value is determined from the plotted data.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. auxmaxZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
auxlabel=<text>
Sets the label used to annotate the aux axis, if it is visible.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. auxlabelZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
auxcrowd=<factor>
Determines how closely the tick marks are spaced on the Aux axis, if visible. The default value is
1, meaning normal crowding. Larger values result in more ticks, and smaller values fewer ticks.
Tick marks will not however be spaced so closely that the labels overlap each other, so to get
very closely spaced marks you may need to reduce the font size as well.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. auxcrowdZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
auxwidth=<pixels>
Determines the lateral size of the aux colour ramp, if visible, in pixels.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. auxwidthZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
auxvisible=true|false
Determines whether the aux axis colour ramp is displayed alongside the plot.
If not supplied (the default), the aux axis will be visible when aux shading is used in any of the
plotted layers.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. auxvisibleZ
affects only zone Z.
forcebitmap=true|false
Affects whether rendering of the data contents of a plot (though not axis labels etc) is always
done to an intermediate bitmap rather than, where possible, being painted using graphics primi‐
tives. This is a rather arcane setting that may nevertheless have noticeable effects on the ap‐
pearance and size of an output graphics file, as well as plotting time. For some types of plot
(e.g. shadingN=auto or shadingN=density) it will have no effect, since this kind of rendering hap‐
pens in any case.
When writing to vector graphics formats (PDF and PostScript), setting it true will force the data
contents to be bitmapped. This may make the output less beautiful (round markers will no longer be
perfectly round), but it may result in a much smaller file if there are very many data points.
When writing to bitmapped output formats (PNG, GIF, JPEG, ...), it fixes shapes to be the same as
seen on the screen rather than be rendered at the mercy of the graphics system, which sometimes
introduces small distortions.
compositor=0..1
Defines how multiple overplotted partially transparent pixels are combined to form a resulting
colour. The way this is used depends on the details of the specified plot.
Currently, this parameter takes a "boost" value in the range 0..1. If the value is zero, satura‐
tion semantics are used: RGB colours are added in proporition to their associated alpha value un‐
til the total alpha is saturated (reaches 1), after which additional pixels have no further ef‐
fect. For larger boost values, the effect is similar, but any non-zero alpha in the output is
boosted to the given minimum value. The effect of this is that even very slightly populated pixels
can be visually distinguished from unpopulated ones which may not be the case for saturation com‐
position.
animate=<table>
If not null, this parameter causes the command to create a sequence of plots instead of just one.
The parameter value is a table with one row for each frame to be produced. Columns in the table
are interpreted as parameters which may take different values for each frame; the column name is
the parameter name, and the value for a given frame is its value from that row. Animating like
this is considerably more efficient than invoking the STILTS command in a loop.
The location of the animation control table. This may take one of the following forms:
* A filename.
* A URL.
* The special value "-", meaning standard input. In this case the input format must be given ex‐
plicitly using the afmt parameter. Note that not all formats can be streamed in this way.
* A scheme specification of the form :<scheme-name>:<scheme-args>.
* A system command line with either a "<" character at the start, or a "|" character at the end
("<syscmd" or "syscmd|"). This executes the given pipeline and reads from its standard output.
This will probably only work on unix-like systems.
In any case, compressed data in one of the supported compression formats (gzip, Unix compress or
bzip2) will be decompressed transparently.
afmt=<in-format>
Specifies the format of the animation control table as specified by parameter animate. The known
formats are listed in SUN/256. This flag can be used if you know what format your table is in. If
it has the special value (auto) (the default), then an attempt will be made to detect the format
of the table automatically. This cannot always be done correctly however, in which case the pro‐
gram will exit with an error explaining which formats were attempted. This parameter is ignored
for scheme-specified tables.
astream=true|false
If set true, the animation control table specified by the animate parameter will be read as a
stream. It is necessary to give the afmt parameter in this case. Depending on the required opera‐
tions and processing mode, this may cause the read to fail (sometimes it is necessary to read the
table more than once). It is not normally necessary to set this flag; in most cases the data will
be streamed automatically if that is the best thing to do. However it can sometimes result in less
resource usage when processing large files in certain formats (such as VOTable). This parameter is
ignored for scheme-specified tables.
acmd=<cmds>
Specifies processing to be performed on the animation control table as specified by parameter ani‐
mate, before any other processing has taken place. The value of this parameter is one or more of
the filter commands described in SUN/256. If more than one is given, they must be separated by
semicolon characters (";"). This parameter can be repeated multiple times on the same command line
to build up a list of processing steps. The sequence of commands given in this way defines the
processing pipeline which is performed on the table.
Commands may alteratively be supplied in an external file, by using the indirection character '@'.
Thus a value of "@filename" causes the file filename to be read for a list of filter commands to
execute. The commands in the file may be separated by newline characters and/or semicolons, and
lines which are blank or which start with a '#' character are ignored.
parallel=<int-value>
Determines how many threads will run in parallel if animation output is being produced. Only used
if the animate parameter is supplied. The default value is the number of processors apparently
available to the JVM.
ylog=true|false
If false (the default), the scale on the Y axis is linear, if true it is logarithmic.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. ylogZ affects
only zone Z.
yflip=true|false
If true, the scale on the Y axis will increase in the opposite sense from usual (e.g. right to
left rather than left to right).
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. yflipZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
tlabel=<text>
Gives a label to be used for annotating the Time axis. If not supplied no label will be drawn.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. tlabelZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
ylabel=<text>
Gives a label to be used for annotating axis Y A default value based on the plotted data will be
used if no value is supplied.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. ylabelZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
t2func=<time-expr>
Defines a secondary time axis in terms of the primary one. If a secondary axis is defined in this
way, then the axis opposite the primary one, i.e. the one on the top edge of the plot, will be an‐
notated with the appropriate tickmarks.
The value of this parameter is an algebraic expression giving the numeric value to be displayed on
the secondary axis corresponding to a given time value on the primary axis. The expression may be
given in terms of one of the following variables:
* mjd: Modified Julian Date
* jd: Julian Day
* decYear: decimal year CE
* unixSec: seconds since 1970-01-01T00:00:00
In most cases, the value of this parameter will simply be one of those variable names, for in‐
stance, "mjd" to annotate the secondary axis in Modified Julian Date. However you can apply opera‐
tions to these values in the usual way if required, for instance to provide a differently offset
date scale.
The function supplied should be monotonic and reasonably well-behaved, otherwise the secondary ax‐
is annotation may not work well. Tick marks will always be applied on a linear scale. Currently
there is no way to annotate the secondary axis with ISO-8601 dates or other non-numeric labels.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. t2funcZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
y2func=<function-of-y>
Defines a secondary Y axis in terms of the primary one. If a secondary axis is defined in this
way, then the axis opposite the primary one (i.e. on the right side of the plot) will be annotated
with the appropriate tickmarks.
The value of this parameter is an algebraic expression in terms of the variable y giving the value
on the secondary Y axis corresponding to a given value on the primary Y axis.
For instance, if the primary Y axis represents flux in Jansky, then supplying the expression
"2.5*(23-log10(y))-48.6" (or "janskyToAb(y)") would annotate the secondary Y axis as AB magni‐
tudes.
The function supplied should be monotonic and reasonably well-behaved, otherwise the secondary ax‐
is annotation may not work well. The application will attempt to make a sensible decision about
whether to use linear or logarithmic tick marks.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. y2funcZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
t2label=<text>
Provides a string that will label the secondary Time axis. This appears on the opposite side of
the plot to the Time axis itself.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. t2labelZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
y2label=<text>
Provides a string that will label the secondary Y axis. This appears on the opposite side of the
plot to the Y axis itself.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. y2labelZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
grid=true|false
If true, grid lines are drawn on the plot at positions determined by the major tick marks. If
false, they are absent.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. gridZ affects
only zone Z.
tcrowd=<number>
Determines how closely the tick marks are spaced on the Time axis. The default value is 1, meaning
normal crowding. Larger values result in more ticks, and smaller values fewer ticks. Tick marks
will not however be spaced so closely that the labels overlap each other, so to get very closely
spaced marks you may need to reduce the font size as well.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. tcrowdZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
ycrowd=<number>
Determines how closely the tick marks are spaced on the Y axis. The default value is 1, meaning
normal crowding. Larger values result in more ticks, and smaller values fewer ticks. Tick marks
will not however be spaced so closely that the labels overlap each other, so to get very closely
spaced marks you may need to reduce the font size as well.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. ycrowdZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
tformat=iso-8601|year|mjd|unix
Selects the way in which time values are represented when using them to label the time axis.
The available options are:
* iso-8601: ISO 8601 date, of the form yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss.s (e.g. "2012-03-13T04")
* year: Decimal year (e.g. "2012.197")
* mjd: Modified Julian Date (e.g. "55999.2")
* unix: Seconds since midnight of 1 Jan 1970 (e.g. "1331613420")
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. tformatZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
minor=true|false
If true, minor tick marks are painted along the axes as well as the major tick marks. Minor tick
marks do not have associated grid lines.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. minorZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
shadow=true|false
If true and no secondary axis is in use, then tick marks without numeric labels are painted along
the axis opposite to the primary axis, so that tick marks are visible along all edges not just the
ones with numeric labels. If a secondary axis is in use, this setting is ignored.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. shadowZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
gridcolor=<rrggbb>|red|blue|...
The color of the plot grid, given by name or as a hexadecimal RGB value.
The standard plotting colour names are red, blue, green, grey, magenta, cyan, orange, pink, yel‐
low, black, light_grey, white. However, many other common colour names (too many to list here) are
also understood. The list currently contains those colour names understood by most web browsers,
from AliceBlue to YellowGreen, listed e.g. in the Extended color keywords section of the CSS3
standard.
Alternatively, a six-digit hexadecimal number RRGGBB may be supplied, optionally prefixed by "#"
or "0x", giving red, green and blue intensities, e.g. "ff00ff", "#ff00ff" or "0xff00ff" for magen‐
ta.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. gridcolorZ
affects only zone Z.
gridtrans=0..1
Transparency of grid lines that may be drawn over the plot. The range is 0 (opaque) to 1 (invisi‐
ble). This value is 1-alpha.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. gridtransZ
affects only zone Z.
texttype=plain|antialias|latex
Determines how to turn label text into characters on the plot. Plain and Antialias both take the
text at face value, but Antialias smooths the characters. LaTeX interprets the text as LaTeX
source code and typesets it accordingly.
When not using LaTeX, antialiased text usually looks nicer, but can be perceptibly slower to plot.
At time of writing, on MacOS antialiased text seems to be required to stop the writing coming out
upside-down for non-horizontal text (MacOS java bug).
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. texttypeZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
fontsize=<int-value>
Size of the text font in points.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. fontsizeZ af‐
fects only zone Z.
fontstyle=standard|serif|mono
Font style for text.
The available options are:
* standard
* serif
* mono
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. fontstyleZ
affects only zone Z.
fontweight=plain|bold|italic|bold_italic
Font weight for text.
The available options are:
* plain
* bold
* italic
* bold_italic
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. fontweightZ
affects only zone Z.
tmin=<year-or-iso8601>
Minimum value of the time coordinate plotted. This sets the value before any subranging is ap‐
plied. If not supplied, the value is determined from the plotted data.
The value may be set with a string that can be interpreted as a decimal year (e.g. "2007.521") or
an ISO-8601 string (e.g. "2007-07-10T03:57:36", "2007-07-10T03" or "2007-07-10"). Note however
that the numeric value of this configuration item if accessed programmatically is seconds since 1
Jan 1970.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. tminZ affects
only zone Z.
tmax=<year-or-iso8601>
Maximum value of the time coordinate plotted. This sets the value before any subranging is ap‐
plied. If not supplied, the value is determined from the plotted data.
The value may be set with a string that can be interpreted as a decimal year (e.g. "2007.521") or
an ISO-8601 string (e.g. "2007-07-10T03:57:36", "2007-07-10T03" or "2007-07-10"). Note however
that the numeric value of this configuration item if accessed programmatically is seconds since 1
Jan 1970.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. tmaxZ affects
only zone Z.
tsub=<lo>,<hi>
Defines a normalised adjustment to the data range of the Time axis. The value may be specified as
a comma-separated pair of two numbers, giving the lower and upper bounds of the range of of inter‐
est respectively. This sub-range is applied to the data range that would otherwise be used, either
automatically calculated or explicitly supplied; zero corresponds to the lower bound and one to
the upper.
The default value "0,1" therefore has no effect. The range could be restricted to its lower half
with the value 0,0.5.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. tsubZ affects
only zone Z.
ymin=<number>
Minimum value of the data coordinate on the Y axis. This sets the value before any subranging is
applied. If not supplied, the value is determined from the plotted data.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. yminZ affects
only zone Z.
ymax=<number>
Maximum value of the data coordinate on the Y axis. This sets the value before any subranging is
applied. If not supplied, the value is determined from the plotted data.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. ymaxZ affects
only zone Z.
ysub=<lo>,<hi>
Defines a normalised adjustment to the data range of the Y axis. The value may be specified as a
comma-separated pair of two numbers, giving the lower and upper bounds of the range of of interest
respectively. This sub-range is applied to the data range that would otherwise be used, either au‐
tomatically calculated or explicitly supplied; zero corresponds to the lower bound and one to the
upper.
The default value "0,1" therefore has no effect. The range could be restricted to its lower half
with the value 0,0.5.
If a zone suffix is appended to the parameter name, only that zone is affected, e.g. ysubZ affects
only zone Z.
navaxes=t|y|ty
Determines the axes which are affected by the interactive navigation actions (pan and zoom). The
default is t which means that the various mouse gestures will provide panning and zooming in the
Time direction only. However, if it is set to ty mouse actions will affect both the horizontal and
vertical axes.
zoomfactor=<number>
Sets the amount by which the plot view zooms in or out for each unit of mouse wheel movement. A
value of 1 means that mouse wheel zooming has no effect. A higher value means that the mouse wheel
zooms faster and a value nearer 1 means it zooms slower. Values below 1 are not permitted.
leglabelN=<text>
Sets the presentation label for the layer with a given suffix. This is the text which is displayed
in the legend, if present. Multiple layers may use the same label, in which case they will be com‐
bined to form a single legend entry.
If no value is supplied (the default), the suffix itself is used as the label.
layerN=<layer-type> <layerN-specific-params>
Selects one of the available plot types for layerN. A plot consists of a plotting surface, set up
using the various unsuffixed parameters of the plotting command, and zero or more plot layers.
Each layer is introduced by a parameter with the name layer<N> where the suffix "<N>" is a label
identifying the layer and is appended to all the parameter names which configure that layer. Suf‐
fixes may be any string, including the empty string.
This parameter may take one of the following values, described in more detail in SUN/256:
* line
* linearfit
* mark
* fill
* quantile
* grid
* histogram
* kde
* knn
* densogram
* gaussian
* yerror
* spectrogram
* label
* function
Each of these layer types comes with a list of type-specific parameters to define the details of
that layer, including some or all of the following groups:
* input table parameters (e.g. inN, icmdN)
* coordinate params referring to input table columns (e.g. xN, yN)
* layer style parameters (e.g. shadingN, colorN)
Every parameter notionally carries the same suffix N. However, if the suffix is not present, the
application will try looking for a parameter with the same name with no suffix instead. In this
way, if several layers have the same value for a given parameter (for instance input table), you
can supply it using one unsuffixed parameter to save having to supply several parameters with the
same value but different suffixes.
zoneN=<text>
Defines which plot zone the layer with suffix N will appear in. This only makes sense for multi-
zone plots. The actual value of the parameter is not significant, it just serves as a label, but
different layers will end up in the same plot zone if they give the same values for this parame‐
ter.
SEE ALSO
stilts(1)
If the package stilts-doc is installed, the full documentation SUN/256 is available in HTML format:
file:///usr/share/doc/stilts/sun256/index.html
VERSION
STILTS version 3.4.9-debian
This is the Debian version of Stilts, which lack the support of some file formats and network protocols.
For differences see
file:///usr/share/doc/stilts/README.Debian
AUTHOR
Mark Taylor (Bristol University)
Mar 2017 STILTS-PLOT2TIME(1)