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2.6 Utilities for parsing MGL ¶

MathGL library provides several tools for parsing MGL scripts. There is tools saving it to bitmap or vectorial images (mglconv). Tool mglview show MGL script and allow one to rotate and setup the image. Another feature of mglview is loading *.mgld files (see ExportMGLD()) for quick viewing 3d pictures.

Both tools have similar set of arguments. They can be name of script file or options. You can use ‘-’ as script name for using standard input (i.e. pipes). Options are:

• -1 str set str as argument $1 for script;
• ... ...
• -9 str set str as argument $9 for script;
• -L loc set locale to loc;
• -s fname set MGL script for setting up the plot;
• -h print help message.

Additionally mglconv have following options:

• -A val add val into the list of animation parameters;
• -C v1:v2[:dv] add values from v1 ot v2 with step dv (default is 1) into the list of animation parameters;
• -o name set output file name;
• -n disable default output (script should save results by itself);
• -S val set set scaling factor for setsize;
• -q val set quality for output (val=0...9).

Also you can create animated GIF file or a set of JPEG files with names ‘frameNNNN.jpg’ (here ‘NNNN’ is frame index). Values of the parameter $0 for making animation can be specified inside the script by comment ##a val for each value val (one comment for one value) or by option(s) ‘-A val’. Also you can specify a cycle for animation by comment ##c v1 v2 dv or by option -C v1:v2:dv. In the case of found/specified animation parameters, tool will execute script several times – once for each value of $0.

MathGL also provide another simple tool mgl.cgi which parse MGL script from CGI request and send back produced PNG file. Usually this program should be placed in /usr/lib/cgi-bin/. But you need to put this program by yourself due to possible security issues and difference of Apache server settings.