Tutorial

UNDER HEAVY CONSTRUCTION

This tutorial gives a guided tour through the programs included in the "samples" subdirectory found in the installation directory. It also contains material introducing the command line interface along with hints and suggestions for using PyTioga effectively.

By the way, the tutorial assumes you want to use Python directly to write the programs that describe the figures and plots. If instead of that you’d prefer a command-line interface along the lines of gnuplot, then be sure to read all about Ctioga. Basically, Ctioga writes the program (in the Ruby programming language) for you, making it easy to do easy plots while still having the ability to do complex ones by adding options to the command line.


The first step in the tutorial is to locate the samples directory and take a look at what’s inside. You should find a README and several subdirectories including:

The README file basically just directs readers to this documentation. The "figures" subfolder has the most basic stuff. Next comes "plots" which extends the discussion to the methods needed to make plots. The final three folders, "star_history", "star_profile", and "zams", come from my own stellar evolution work. They give "real life" examples of non-trivial applications.

Here are the sections of the tutorial, in the order they are intended to be read.

Basic Anatomy — The basic anatomy of a PyTioga document

Command Line — How to run PyTioga from the shell

Using Python — The bare essentials for using Python for PyTioga

SimpleFigure — A first look at a nontrivial tioga figure definition

TextForTeX — How to Add Packages and How (and How Not) to Enter Text for TeX

Plots — The extras for making plots

Data — Tools for reading and manipulating the data for plots

SampledData — Making plots with a false-color image of sampled data

Animation — How to create a sequence of PDFs and convert it to a movie

OtherStuff — A few "real life" examples

Epilog — "Do it yourself" using the tioga kernel for making figures