Plot-10

Also Known As: Tek Plot-10

Type Vector

Colors NA

Compression Uncompressed

Maximum Image Size NA

Multiple Images Per File No

Numerical Format NA

Originator Tektronix

Platform All

Supporting Applications NA

See Also None

Usage
Tektronix terminal control, occasionally written to files instead of to the terminal.

Comments
If you need this information, you really need it badly, and good luck. Plot-10 files are basically dumps of terminal commands, written on-the-fly to a file.

Code fragments are available for this format.

Plot-10 is associated with a series of graphics terminals manufactured by Tektronix, which were widely used for a certain period of time, primarily at scientific and laboratory sites, before cheap, high-resolution raster display terminals became widely available in the 1980s. Tektronix no longer supports these terminals except under contract. Many owners of Tektronix terminals, however, saw fit through the years to code applications that saved Tektronix terminal commands in local files. A typical application might acquire data from an experiment, for instance, and provide a real-time display of it on a Tektronix terminal. If this data was interesting in any way, it was saved. Unfortunately, because Tektronix provided no guidelines for this, the application developer was forced to make up his or her own format on the spot.

Contents:
For Further Information

The result of this situation is that there are a lot of "Plot-10" formats in existence. Because most scientific programming has been in Fortran, you might consider that any data you find, on an old tape, for example, may be organized in accordance with the Fortran formatting conventions.

Tektronix technical support has access to the documents describing several terminal communication protocols from that era. These include IDL, STI, and TCS. Unfortunately, they appear to be in offsite backup storage, and we were unable to obtain them from Tektronix, because the company wanted to charge a hefty fee even to look for them. We hope that these documents might be made available to us in a future edition of this book.

For Further Information

For further information about Plot-10, you might try contacting:

Tektronix
Attn: Technical Support
26600 Southwest Parkway
Wilsonville, OR 97070-1000
Voice: 503-685-2418
WWW: http://www.tek.com/

Ask for information that will allow you to decode Plot-10 terminal dump files. Mentioning the IDL, STI, and TCS documentation may be helpful. Be sure to ask if there is a fee.

The pbmplus utilities included on the CD-ROM include an application to convert one of the Plot-10 versions.

Type	Vector
Colors	NA
Compression	Uncompressed
Maximum Image Size	NA
Multiple Images Per File	No
Numerical Format	NA
Originator	Tektronix
Platform	All
Supporting Applications	NA
See Also	None