[x] is a PLOT79 device library suffix letter.
When the output device supports it, the visible sphere arcs are plotted in color, to enhance depth perception. The colors are defined by a file, rgb.dat, in the current directory, which contains a single initial comment line, followed by (index, values in free format, each starting a new line.
The index values must lie in the range 0 ... 255, although 0 ... 7 are permanently preassigned by the CORE system to black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, and white, in that order, and cannot be altered.
The (red, triples specify primary intensities on a scale of 0.0 ... 1.0.
The range of depth values wmin...wmax is mapped uniformly to the color range 8 ... MAXINDEX, where MAXINDEX is the largest color index found in the file.
The default rgb.dat file defines 256 colors in the rainbow order, red (front), orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet (back) (remember: Roy G. Biv). The human eye is less sensitive in the blue-violet part of the visible spectrum than in the green-yellow part, so using blue-violet colors for far distant spheres is quite effective at enhancing the illusion of depth.
If no color map file is provided, a monochrome image is produced.
The normal sphplt input file contains a one-line title, six window box extents in order umin, umax, vmin, vmax, wmin, wmax, followed by a list of visible arcs. Each arc starts a new line, and consists of (u,v,w,r) position and radius values, plus a starting and ending angle, measured counterclockwise in degrees from the u axis.
All numbers are specified in free-format Fortran list-directed input.
Window coordinates are always left-handed, u increasing to the right, v increasing vertically, and w increasing from front to back.
10 Random Uniform Spheres -2.000E-01 1.200E+00 -2.000E-01 1.200E+00 0.000E+00 1.000E+00 5.64009E-01 9.10292E-01 6.53278E-01 1.99976E-01 36.565 135.711 5.64009E-01 9.10292E-01 6.53278E-01 1.99976E-01 254.019 315.613 4.74618E-01 3.60786E-01 2.82261E-01 1.99976E-01 .000 360.000 1.17690E-02 1.03040E-01 6.21902E-01 1.99976E-01 .000 360.000 2.69174E-01 9.19521E-01 5.39128E-01 1.99976E-01 25.841 239.187 8.67562E-01 8.89611E-01 3.04358E-01 1.99976E-01 .000 360.000 7.68893E-02 8.34062E-01 6.68417E-01 1.99976E-01 82.205 286.936 3.45574E-01 5.34611E-01 2.96911E-01 1.99976E-01 3.802 48.431 3.45574E-01 5.34611E-01 2.96911E-01 1.99976E-01 131.097 249.339 3.46771E-01 8.34916E-01 1.94115E-01 1.99976E-01 .000 360.000 1.89525E-01 4.70346E-01 7.88548E-01 1.99976E-01 125.010 298.758 3.15322E-01 5.55976E-01 5.86497E-01 1.99976E-01 128.987 240.066
This particular file was generated by spheres from the sample file shown in its manual pages. The coordinate values differ from those in that file because they are window, rather than world, coordinates.
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