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Macsyma Scientific Graphics Manual

The Macsyma Scientific Graphics Reference Manual details the features and functionalities of Macsyma version 2.4, a symbolic manipulation program developed at MIT. It covers various aspects of plotting and graphics, including two-dimensional and three-dimensional graphics, animation, and screen display. The document is intended for licensed users and emphasizes the importance of acknowledging Macsyma's contribution in any reports or theses that utilize the software.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)

21 views67 pages

Macsyma Scientific Graphics Manual

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meralomar2013

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Available Formats

Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Macsyma

Scientiﬁc Graphics Reference Manual

Macsyma Scientiﬁc Graphics Reference Manual

This document corresponds to Macsyma version 2.4.

The software described in this document is furnished only under license and may be used or copied only in
accordance with the terms of such license. Nothing contained in this document should be construed to imply
the granting of a license to make, use, or sell any of the software described herein. The information in this
document is subject to change without notice, and should not be construed to imply any representation or
commitment by Macsyma, Inc.

The Documentation Staﬀ of Macsyma Inc. prepared this manual.

A report or thesis that contains results obtained by using Macsyma should acknowledge that the work was
done with the aid of Macsyma, a large symbolic manipulation program developed at the MIT Laboratory for
Computer Science and supported from 1975 to 1983 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
under grant NSG 1323, by the Oﬃce of Naval Research under grant N00014-77-C-0641, by the U.S. Depart-
ment of Energy under grant ET-78-C-02-4687, and by the U.S. Air Force under grant F49620-79-C-020, from
1982 to 1992 by Symbolics, Inc. of Concord Mass. and since by Macsyma Inc. of Arlington, Mass.
A copy of the report or thesis should also be sent to Macsyma Inc at the address below.

Macsyma, PC Macsyma and PDEase are registered trademarks of Macsyma Inc. DataViewer, MathTips,
NumKit and MathHelp are trademarks of Macsyma Inc. Matlab is a trademark of the MathWorks, Inc. All
other product names mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.

This document may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the prior written consent of Macsyma
Inc.

Printed in the USA.

Printing Number and Year: 98 1

Macsyma Inc.
20 Academy Street
Arlington, MA 02476-6436

(781) 646–4550
info@[Link]
E-mail:
service@[Link]
Internet: URL [Link]
Contents

1 Plotting and Graphics 1

1.1 Two-Dimensional Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.1 Plotting Functions of One Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.2 Plotting Parametric Curves in Two Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.1.3 Contour Plots and Implicit Plots in Two Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.4 Plotting Discrete Sets of Points in Two Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.1.5 Plotting Vector Fields in Two Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.1.6 Special Capabilities For Two Dimensional Plotting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
[Link] Adaptive Density Plotting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
[Link] Character Plotting (2D Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
[Link] Line Plotting (2D Only) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.2 Three-Dimensional Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.2.1 Plotting Functions of Two Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.2.2 Plotting Parametric Curves in Three Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.2.3 Contour Plots in Three Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.2.4 Plotting Discrete Sets of Points in Three Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.2.5 Plotting Parametric Surfaces in Three Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.2.6 Plotting Vector Fields in Three Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.3 Changing Plot Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.3.1 Changing the Number of Plot Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.3.2 Coordinate Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
[Link] Pre-Deﬁned Coordinate Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
[Link] User-Deﬁned Coordinate Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
1.3.3 Superimposing Plots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
[Link] Basic Command for Combining Plots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
[Link] The “Clear/Wait” Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
[Link] The “First/Same/Last” Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
[Link] Merging Plot Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
1.4 Changing Plot Appearance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
1.4.1 Changing the View of the Plot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
[Link] Changing Plot Scale and Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
[Link] Changing Viewpoint and Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
1.4.2 Appearance of Plotted Points, Lines and Surfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

i
[Link] Line Types, Line Colors, and Plot Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
[Link] Surface Colors, Lighting and Mesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
[Link] Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
1.4.3 Changing Bounding Box and Axes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
[Link] Bounding Box and Clipping Planes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
[Link] Plot Axes, Axis Titles and Axis Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
1.4.4 Changing Text Labels in Plots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
[Link] Plot Titles and Annotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
[Link] Contour Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
[Link] Other Text Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
1.4.5 Specifying a Graphics Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
1.5 Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
1.5.1 Deﬁning Animations With the Plot Animate Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
1.5.2 Deﬁning Animations in the Macsyma Front End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
1.5.3 Playback of Animation Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
1.6 Screen Display, Files and Hardcopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
1.6.1 Screen Display and Redisplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
1.6.2 Hardcopying Plots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
1.6.3 Saving Plots in Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
1.7 Other Topics in Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
1.7.1 Cleaning Up the Plotting Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
1.7.2 Handling Plot Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
1.7.3 Alternate Representations of 3D Plots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
1.7.4 Miscellaneous Plotting Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

2 The Macsyma Front End Math Engine 55

2.1 Entering Data into the MFE Math Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.1.1 Import and Export – external data ﬁles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.2 The mfe data Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.2.1 Getting Data From the MFE Math Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.2.2 Putting Data into the MFE Math Engine from Macsyma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.2.3 Viewing Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
[Link] Making 2 and 3 Dimensional Plots of MFE Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
[Link] Smoothing and Graphing MFE Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

ii
List of Tables

1.1 Arguments of xfun and yfun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

1.2 Specifying xfun and yfun in plot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
1.3 Settings for centerplot, perspective, and reverse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.4 Settings for centerplot, perspective, and reverse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
1.5 Examples of Line and Symbol Speciﬁcation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
1.6 Built-in Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
1.7 Access to Plot Representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
1.8 Controlling Representations From replot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

iii
iv
Chapter 1

Plotting and Graphics

This chapter describes how to produce two- and three-dimensional plots in Macsyma. You can produce ﬁve
basic kinds of plots with Macsyma:

• Plots of functions of one or two independent variables. See Section 1.1.1, page 2 and Section 1.2.1,
page 18.

• Plots of parametric curves and surfaces. See Section 1.1.2, page 5 and Section 1.2.2, page 20 and
Section 1.2.5, page 21.
• Contour plots and plots of implicit relations. See Section 1.1.3, page 6 and Section 1.2.3, page 20.

• Plots of discrete point sets. See Section 1.1.4, page 9 and Section 1.2.4, page 21.

• Plots of vector ﬁelds. See Section 1.1.5, page 11 and Section 1.2.6, page 23.

Macsyma’s plotting commands make many default decisions about plots without bothering you to ask, such
as choices of viewpoint, plot line colors, surface coloring models, axis label numbers, and so forth. After you
become familiar with the basic plotting functions, you may wish to modify or override Macsyma’s graphics
defaults to get precisely the effects that you want.
Macsyma offers a wide range of controls so you can obtain precisely the publication-quality scientific graphics
you want. You can

• Change basic plot geometry of the plotted object itself, such as the number of plot points, the coordinate
system used, and superimposition of plots. See Section 1.3, page 24.

• Change the viewpoint, roll angle, scale and perspective. See Section [Link], page 35.
• Change the appearance attributes of the plotted object itself, such as line colors, surface colors, lighting
and plot point symbols. See Section [Link], page 36.
• Change the secondary elements of the plot which surround the main plotted object, such as the plot
axes, bounding box and text labels.

• Animate plots, including animating changes of surface location, shape, color, viewpoint, lighting, and
other plot attributes.

Basic plot geometry (such as number of plot points and their coordinates) can be determined only at the
time when Macsyma generates a plot. Most other plot characteristics can be changed in two basic ways.

1
2 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

• Plot characteristics can be changed programmatically at the time the plot is generated, by changing
option variables and optional arguments to the plotting commands which generate the plot.

• Most attributes of a plot can be changed after the plot is generated, using the graphics editing capa-
bilities in the Macsyma Front End. For Macsyma 2.0 and successors, see Scientiﬁc Notebook Interface
Reference Manual for more information.

Some plot utilities are also described.

• Superimposing plots (See Section 1.3.3, page 31)

• Hardcopying plots (For Macsyma 2.0, see Section 1.6.2, page 51)

• Naming and saving plots (For Macsyma 2.0, see Section 1.6.3, page 52)

1.1 Two-Dimensional Graphics

This section discusses the main two-dimensional plotting commands in Macsyma. The main commands for
two-dimensional plotting are

• plot, Section 1.1.1, page 2

• paramplot, Section 1.1.2, page 5

• contourplot and implicit plot, Section 1.1.3, page 6

• graph, Section 1.1.4, page 9

• plot2 vect, Section 1.1.5, page 11

1.1.1 Plotting Functions of One Variable

plot(y-exps, x-var,x-range,{’arg1 ,. . . ,’arg2 }) Special Form
Plots y-exps in the y direction, while x-var , the x-axis, takes on values speciﬁed by x-range. The inputs
arg1 , . . . , argn are optional. The input arguments can take various forms, each described below.
The input y-exp can be any of:

y-exps Action
exp plot plots a curve of exp against x-var .
[exp1 , . . . , expn ] Plots n curves of expi against x-var . Each expi is evaluated in the context:
float(ev(expi , x-var =value from x-range, numer)). An error is signaled
if this does not result in a ﬂoating-point number.

The input x-range can be any of:

1.1. TWO-DIMENSIONAL GRAPHICS 3

x-range Meaning
low , high where low and high evaluate to numbers. The value low may be either
greater or less than high. The input x-var takes on plotnum values equally
spaced between low and high. See Section 1.3.1, page 24.

Note: The ﬁrst argument is evaluated at low ﬁrst. For example,

plot(1/x,x,−1,−3); calculates 1/(−1.0) before 1/(−3.0). This matters
only if the computation of the first argument changes a variable which in
turn changes the value returned by subsequent computation. Whether or
not low < high, min(low , high) is displayed on the left side of the plot.
This can be overridden using the optional argument special with reflect
as xfun. (see Section [Link], page 28).
low , high, integer This form has the same effect as the above except that x-var takes on only
integer values between low and high inclusive.
[val1 , . . . , valn ] x-var takes the values specified by the list of values.
arrayname where arrayname is the name of a declared floating-point one-dimensional
array. Such an array can be created by means of a command such as
array(arrayname, float, max-index );. In this case, x-var takes the val-
ues from arrayname[0] through arrayname[max-index ]. (Here, max-index
is the maximum index of arrayname.)

The optional arguments arg1 , . . . , argn can appear in any order. The rule for evaluating optional
arguments is as follows: If the argument is atomic, it is evaluated, and the resulting values are used.
The inputs arg1 , . . . , argn can be any of the following:

Optional Argument Reference

x-label, y-label or title descriptor See Section 1.4.4, page 45.
Line type descriptor See Section 1.3, page 24.
ﬁrst, last and same See Section [Link], page 31.
polar, log, linlog, or loglin See Section 1.3.2, page 25.

An alternative form for plot is plot(y-funs, x-range, arg1 , ..., argn );. Here, y-funs must be a
function of one argument or a list of functions of one argument. The functions must be either translated
or compiled functions, and they must return a floating-point number when given floating-point or integer
arguments. This form of plot acts as though you had not only given an argument to the y-funs, but
also specified that argument as the variable in the form above. For example, plot(f,-2,2); acts like
plot(f(x), x,-2, 2);. This provides a quicker evaluation of the first argument and for that reason
no checking is done on the result. If the wrong sort of number is returned, the plot is not useful.
Examples
The example below Figure 1.1, page 4, illustrates how you plot sin x against x as x takes on plotnum
values between −π and π.
(c1) plot(sin(x), x, -%pi, %pi)$
This example Figure 1.2, page 4, illustrates how you plot a list of the first few Fibonacci numbers versus
the integer position in the list.
(c1) lst:makelist(fib(i), i, 1, 9);
(d1) [1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34]
(c2) plot(lst[i], i, 1, length(lst), integer)$

The example Figure 1.3, page 5, illustrates how you plot f (x) as x takes the values in the speciﬁed list.
(c1) f(x):=sqrt(x+%pi)$
4 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

0.50

Y 0.00

-0.50

-2.00 0.00 2.00

-3.1 < X < 3.1; -1.00 < Y < 1.00 X

Figure 1.1: Example of the Plot command

30.00

20.00
Y

10.00

0.00
2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00

1.0 < X < 9.0; 1.0 < Y < 34. X

Figure 1.2: Plotting at Integer Values of the Abscissa

1.1. TWO-DIMENSIONAL GRAPHICS 5

(c2) translate(f)$
(c3) plot(f, [-2, 3, 100.12],
"X","F(X)","Plot made from a list of abscissa values")$

Plot made from a list of abscissa values

10.00

7.50

F(X)
5.00

2.50

0.00 50.00 100.00

-2.0 < X < 1.00e+2; 1.1 < Y < 10. X

Figure 1.3: Plot of a Macsyma Function with a list of Abscissa Values

1.1.2 Plotting Parametric Curves in Two Dimensions

paramplot(x-exps, y-exps, t-var, t-range, {’arg1 , . . . , ’argn }) Special Form
Plots x-exps as the x coordinate against y-exps as the y coordinate. The inputs arg1 , . . . , argn are
optional.
The format for the ﬁrst two arguments is the same as that for the ﬁrst argument to plot. Thus if x-exps
is [xexp1 , . . . , xexpn ] and y-exps is [yexp1 , . . . , yexpk ], then max(n,k) curves are plotted. Assuming
n > k , they are: xexp1 vs. yexp1 , . . . , xexpk vs. yexpk , xexpk+1 vs. yexpk , . . . , xexpn vs. yexpk .
The inputs x-exps and y-exps can be any of:

x-y-exps Action
exp paramplot plots a curve of (x-exp,y-exp) against t-var .
[exp1 , . . . , expn ] Plots n curves of expi against t-var . Each expi is evaluated in the context:
float(ev(expi , t-var =value from x-range, numer)). An error is signaled
if this does not result in a ﬂoating-point number.

The input t-range can be any of:

t-range Meaning
6 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

low , high where low and high evaluate to numbers. The value low may be either
greater or less than high. The input t-var takes on plotnum values equally
spaced between low and high. See Section 1.3.1, page 24.

Note: The dependent variables are evaluated at low ﬁrst.

low , high, integer This form has the same effect as the above except that t-var takes on only
integer values between low and high inclusive.
[val1 , . . . , valn ] t-var takes the values specified by the list of values.
arrayname where arrayname is the name of a declared floating-point one-dimensional
array. Such an array can be created by means of a command such as
array(arrayname, float, max-index );. In this case, t-var takes the val-
ues from arrayname[0] through arrayname[max-index ]. (Here, max-index
is the maximum index of arrayname.)

Optional Argument Reference

An alternative form for paramplot is paramplot(y-funs, x-range, arg1 , ..., argn );. Here, y-funs
must be a function of one argument or a list of functions of one argument. The functions must be
either translated or compiled functions, and they must return a floating-point number when given
floating-point or integer arguments. This form of paramplot acts as though you had not only given an
argument to the y-funs, but also specified that argument as the variable in the form above. For example,
paramplot(f,-2,2); acts like paramplot(f(x), x,-2, 2);. This provides a quicker evaluation of the
first argument and for that reason no checking is done on the result. If the wrong sort of number is
returned, the plot is not useful.
Examples
This example Figure 1.4, page 7, plots cos t for the x-axis and sin t for the y-axis as t takes on
plotnum values between 0 and 2π (see Section 1.3.1, page 24). If equalscale is true this draws
a circle (see Section [Link], page 34).
(c1) paramplot(cos(t),sin(t), t, 0, 2*%pi), equalscale:true$
This example plots f (x) vs. g(x) as x goes from 0 to 2π. The following example plots Macsyma
functions, and results in the same plot as the previous example Figure 1.4, page 7.
(c1) f(x):=(mode_declare(x,float),cos(x))$
(c2) g(x):=(mode_declare(x,float),sin(x))$
(c3) translate(f,g)$
(c4) paramplot(f, g, x, 0, 2*%pi), equalscale:true$

1.1.3 Contour Plots and Implicit Plots in Two Dimensions

contourplot(z-funs, x-var, x-range, y-var, y-range, {’arg1 , . . . , ’argn }) Special Form
Plots level contours of the expressions z-funs, which are functions of x-var and y-var . z-funs can be
a single expression or a list of expressions. x-range and y-range can take on the same forms as the
1.1. TWO-DIMENSIONAL GRAPHICS 7

1.00

0.50

Y 0.00

-0.50

-1.00
-1.00 < X < 1.0 -1.00 -0.50 0.00 0.50 1.00
-1.00 < Y < 1.00
Z = 0.00 X

Figure 1.4: Drawing a circle with the Paramplot command

range arguments to the function plot. The option variables contours, zmax, and zmin determine
what contours are displayed. Changing contours does not require any more points to be calculated,
so it makes sense to change contours in a Macsyma break, after a plot, or before using replot. The
contours are drawn using linear interpolation, so they tend to look rough, especially near saddle points,
unless plotnum or plotnum0 and plotnum1 are large. Since the contour tracking algorithm is quite
smart, all contours are either closed loops, or terminate at the boundaries of the region. The arg1 , . . . ,
argn are optional arguments. The optional arguments arg1 , . . . , argn can appear in any order. The
rule for evaluating optional arguments is as follows: If the argument is atomic, it is evaluated, and the
resulting values are used. The inputs arg1 , . . . , argn can be any of the following:

Optional Argument Reference

contourplot is exactly the same as plot3d(..., contour). That is, it calculates the same points as
plot3d would, but displays the points as a contour plot.
contours default: 20 Option Variable
If contours is a positive integer, then approximately contours contours are drawn. The levels between
them are “nice” values. “Nice” means in multiples of a·10n , where a is 1, 2, or 5. The levels are computed
by the same function that determines the placement of tick marks on the axes. The contour levels are
chosen between the maximum and minimum z values to be plotted. This choice is inﬂuenced by the
settings of zmax and zmin, described below.
If contours is a negative integer, then abs(contours); evenly spaced contours are drawn. In this
case the levels are at “nasty” values and you may want to set labelcontours to false, to suppress the
8 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

display of long numbers on the contours. Of course, the range for these contours can be restricted by
setting zmax and zmin appropriately.
If contours is a list of numbers such as contours:[1,0.5,%pi];, then those numbers are used to
determine the heights of the contours. The numbers in the list can be in any order. See also labelcon-
tours.
implicit plot(expr,x-var,xlo,xhi,y-var,ylo,yhi) Function
Plots the graph of functions which are implicitly speciﬁed by expr in the (x, y) plane. expr can be
either an expression in x-var and y-var or an equation of two expressions in x-var and y-var or a list
of expressions or equations. The inputs xlo and xhi are the lower and upper limits of the x-coordinate
and ylo and yhi are the lower and upper limits of the y-coordinate. implicit plot uses Macsyma’s
contourplot machinery to generate the plot.
Do example(implicit plot); for an example, and demo(implicit plot); for a longer demonstra-
tion.
Examples
This example Figure 1.5, page 8, illustrates how to calculate and display 10 contours of 12 y 2 + cos x + 12 x
where x takes plotnum0 values between −6 and 6 and as y takes plotnum1 values between −3 and 3.
(c1) contours:10$
(c2) contourplot(yˆ2/2+cos(x)+x/2,x,-6,6,y,-3,3)$

2.00
–––8.0
–––7.0
–––6.0
–––5.0
Y 0.00
–––4.0
–––3.0
–––2.0
–––1.0
-2.00 –––0.00
–––-1.0
–––-2.0

-6.0 < X < 6.0 -5.00 0.00 5.00

-3.0 < Y < 3.0
Z = 0.00 X

Figure 1.5: Contour plot in two dimensions

The next example Figure 1.6, page 9, illustrates plotting on a 10 × 10 grid:

(c1) contours:plotnum0:plotnum1:10$
(c2) contourplot(random(100), x, 0, 1, y, 0, 1)$

To ﬁnd the zeroes of z 3 = 1 in the complex plane, execute either of the following sequences of commands
resulting in Figure 1.7, page 10. The odd values for plotnum0 and plotnum1 improve the accuracy,
which is needed to plot the intersection point at the center of the plot. The three curved lines are the
1.1. TWO-DIMENSIONAL GRAPHICS 9

1.00

0.75
–––89.
–––79.
–––69.
Y 0.50
–––59.
–––50.
–––39.
0.25 –––29.
–––19.
–––10.0

0.00 < X < 1.0 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00

0.00 < Y < 1.0
Z = 0.00 X

Figure 1.6: Contours Generated by 100 Random Points in Two Dimensions

locus realpart(expression)=1 and the three straight lines are the locus imagpart(expression)=1 . The roots
of z 3 = 1 are the three intersection points of the curved and straight lines.
(c1) plotnum0:plotnum1:61$
(c2) implicit_plot([realpart((x+%i*y)ˆ3-1),imagpart((x+%i*y)ˆ3-1)],
x,-1.5,1.5,y,-1.5,1.5)$
(c1) (plotnum0:plotnum1:61, contours:[0], labelcontours:false)$
(c2) contourplot([realpart((x+%i*y)ˆ3-1),imagpart((x+%i*y)ˆ3-1)],
x,-1.5,1.5,y,-1.5,1.5)$
Macsyma 2.0 and successors enable you to turn on/oﬀ and edit contour labels after generating a plot using
controls in the Macsyma Front End.

1.1.4 Plotting Discrete Sets of Points in Two Dimensions

graph(x-lists, y-lists, {’arg1 , . . . , ’argn }) Special Form
Plots points speciﬁed by the x-lists and y-lists, interpreting x-lists as a list of abscissas, and y-lists as
a list of ordinates. The inputs arg1 , . . . , argn are optional arguments.
The x-lists and y-lists can be in any of the formats below:

1.00

Y 0.00

-1.00

-1.5 < X < 1.5 -1.00 0.00 1.00

-1.5 < Y < 1.5
Z = 0.00 X

Figure 1.7: A plot of an implicit relation

[x-ptn1 , . . . , x-ptnn ] Where x-ptni evaluates to a number. Lists of numbers are interpreted as
lists of x coordinates and y coordinates. They are inserted into a list, which
is then in the form of the first case above.
arrayname Where arrayname is the name of a declared one-dimensional array of
floating-point numbers. The elements of the array are then inserted into a
list, which is inserted into yet another list, thus producing the form of the
first case above.
2d-arrayname Where 2d-arrayname is the name of a declared two-dimensional array of
floating-point numbers. This is interpreted as a list of lists of numbers,
which is exactly in the form of the first case above.

Optional Argument Reference

Example
This example Figure 1.8, page 11, draws a line connecting [1, 5], [2, 10], and [3, 6].
(c1) graph([1,2,3], [5,10,6])$
1.1. TWO-DIMENSIONAL GRAPHICS 11

10.00

8.00
Y

6.00

1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00

1.0 < X < 3.0; 5.0 < Y < 10. X

Figure 1.8: Plotting discrete points in two dimensions

1.1.5 Plotting Vector Fields in Two Dimensions

plot2 vect(vecfield,x-var,x-min,x-max, y-var,y-min,y-max, {’arg1,. . . ,’argn}) Function
Plots vector fields and direction fields in two dimensions. vecfield is a list of two expressions, for the
first and second components of the vector field; or a list of two functions; or one function whose value
is a list of two values. x-var is the name of the variable which is plotted horizontally, and y-var is the
name of the variable which is plotted vertically. For the region where vector basepoints are located,
x-min is the lower limit and x-max is the upper limit of x-var , and y-min is the lower limit and y-max
is the upper limit of y-var . The ’argi are all the optional plotting variables allowed for the special form
graph2.
The option variables plotnum0 and plotnum1 control the number of plot points in the horizontal and
vertical directions respectively.
The x-y-min-max variables do not control the plot size directly. xmin, xmax, ymin and ymax do
this, as for other plotting functions. Usually the plot size should be a little larger than the limits of the
x-var and y-var to allow room to draw the vectors or direction lines.
plot vect scale default: false Option Variable
This option variable can be assigned the name of a function which is applied to the length of each
vector, before the vector is plotted by plot2 vect or plot3d vect. plot vect scale can be assigned
the name of a system function (such as ’log), or a user-defined function. If the scaling function results
in a negative number or negative infinity, e.g. log(veclength) < 1 or log(veclength) = 0, then the
length of the vector is set to zero. If plot vect scale is assigned the value ’plot vect scale or
false, then no scaling occurs.
plot vect head default: true Option Variable
If true then plot2 vect and plot3d vect plots vector fields with arrowheads. When false then
plot2 vect and plot3d vect plot direction fields, in which no arrowheads are drawn, and the shaft
of each arrow is centered at the plot point.
12 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

plot vect head angle default: 0.5236 Option Variable

A floating point number which specifies the angle between the shaft of the vector and head edges of the
head of the vector.
plot vect head size default: 0.100 Option Variable
A floating point number which specifies the length of the edges of the vector head, as a fraction of the
length of the vector shaft.
Example A sample vector field is plotted in Figure 1.9, page 12.
(c1) vect:[y/4.,x/4.]$
(c2) block([plotnum0:10, plotnum1:10],
plot2_vect(vect,x,-1,1,y,-1,1, false, false,
"Plot of Saddle Point Vector Field [Y/4,X/4]"))$

Plot of Saddle Point Vector Field [Y/4,X/4]

1.00

Y 0.00

-1.00
-1.1 < X < 1.1 0.00 1.00
-1.1 < Y < 1.1
Z = 0.00 X

Figure 1.9: Plotting a vector ﬁeld in two dimensions

1.1.6 Special Capabilities For Two Dimensional Plotting

[Link] Adaptive Density Plotting
The package adaplot does adaptive density plotting of lines in two dimensions. Adaptive density plotting is
useful for plotting curves whose curvature varies sharply, and curves for which the deﬁning expressions are
expensive to evaluate.
There are two functions, adaplot2 and adaparamplot2:
adaplot2(yexpr,xvar,xlow,xhigh,ylow,yhigh,{’arg1,. . . ,’argn}) Function
yexpr is an expression or function for the dependent variable. xvar is the name of the independent
variable, and is plotted on the horizontal axis. xlow and xhigh are the limits of xvar in plotting the
curve. (Note that these numbers do not specify the limits of the x-axis display. xmin and xmax
perform this function, as for most other Macsyma plotting functions.) yhigh-ylow is an estimate of the
1.1. TWO-DIMENSIONAL GRAPHICS 13

range of vertical-values in the plot. It is used by adaplot2 to determine the angles of various lines as
they will appear in the plot. (The limits of the y-axis display are ymin and ymax .) The ’argi are the
optional plotting variables allowed for the special form graph2. (No special provision has been made
for log plots, and it is recommended that the logs be applied explicitly.)
adaparamplot2(xexpr,yexpr,tlow,thigh,xlow,xhigh, ylow,yhigh,{’arg1,. . . ,’argn}) Function
xexpr and yexpr are expressions or functions for the dependent variables. tvar is the name of the
independent parameter variable. tlow and thigh are the limits of tvar used in plotting the curve.
xhigh-xlow is an estimate of the range of horizontal values in the plot. xmin and xmax determine the
limits of the display. yhigh-ylow is an estimate of the range of vertical values in the plot. ymin and
ymax determine the limits of the display. The ’argi are the optional plotting variables allowed for the
special form graph2.
Variables which affect the adaptive plot point density are plotnum and:
curv tol default: 0.1 Option Variable
(A single precision floating point number.) The maximum allowable change in curve angular direction
(in radians) at a plot point, for large line segments. The maximum permitted value of dt (or dx) is
4.0*(thigh-tlow )/plotnum. Normally, curv tol is used to control the number of plot points.
The curvature tolerance can be violated for smaller line segments (as controlled by dt factor) or if dx
= dxmin and the angular change still exceeds curv tol.
dt rate default: 2.0 Option Variable
(A single precision floating point number which must be greater than 1.0.) The maximum factor by
which step size can be increased or decreased in one iteration at a plot point.
dt ratio default: 40.0 Option Variable
(A single precision floating point number.) The ratio of largest to smallest permissible step size between
plot points. This is used to control the minimum size limit for line segments.
dt factor default: 4.0 Option Variable
(A single precision floating point number.) The factor by which curvature tolerance increases for shorter
curve segments. Raising dt factor makes the curvature tolerance larger for short line segments, while
leaving the tolerance unchanged for the longest line permissible segments.

[Link] Character Plotting (2D Only)

Even in a modern user interface environment, character plots can be useful; for example, for sending graphical
information in text electronic mail messages.
The functions char plot, char paramplot, char graph, and char multigraph produce plots of speci-
ﬁed functions and sets of data points. These commands are described below.
The plots produced by these commands are character plots with coordinate axes located at minimum x and y
values of the plot. The x and y coordinates are independently scaled to optimally use the speciﬁed graphing
area.

Note: This can distort the shape of the graph. Thus a circle could become an ellipse. The origin of the
graph, the lower left-hand corner, is given on the graph by the values of xorg and yorg; the computed
increments are given by the values of xdelta and ydelta and the maximum x and y values are given by
xmax and ymax. The axes are labeled with the number sequence 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 0, 2, 4, . . . as an aid in
counting the number of increments from the origin.
In Macsyma 2.0 and successors, you may need to change the font in the notebook section containing a
character plot to a ﬁxed width font (such as Courier).
14 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

char plot(f(x), x, low, high, { arg1 , . . . , argn }) Function

Plots the expression f(x) in the domain low < x < high. The inputs arg1 , . . . , argn are optional
arguments that control the precise form of the display.
The ﬁrst argument to char plot can also be a list of functions rather than just a single function. This
allows you to plot several functions on the same set of axes.
The optional arguments can be any of the following:

argn Description
integer Macsyma computes only integer values of the abscissa. If you spec-
ify integer, you cannot specify any other optional arguments.
list Macsyma interprets this list as a list of plotting characters to be
used to display the function. If you do not specify list, Macsyma
uses an asterisk (*). If you want to specify a special symbol such
as ; or space, you must precede that symbol with a backslash (\).
xlabel xlabel is a string that labels the x axis of the plot. xlabel is not
evaluated by Macsyma. If xlabel is false, the axis is displayed
without a label.
ylabel ylabel is a string that labels the y axis of the plot. ylabel is not
evaluated by Macsyma. If ylabel is false, the axis is displayed
without a label.

The syntax char plot(f(x),x,[x1 ,x2 , ...,xn ]); can also be used. This syntax causes char plot
to display a plot of f (x ) for each of the xi speciﬁed. When char plot is used in this way, the keyword
integer described above is ignored even if given. The other possible optional arguments behave as
described above.
char paramplot(f1(t), f2(t), t, low, high, {list}) Function
Plots the plane curve f (t) = (f 1(t), f 2(t)) for low < t < high. The input list is an optional argument
for specifying the plotting characters. If you do not specify list, Macsyma uses an asterisk (*). For
example, char paramplot(cos(t), sin(t), t, 0, 2*%pi); plots a circle.
The ﬁrst two arguments themselves can be lists if you want to plot more than one curve at one time.
The syntax would be: char paramplot([f1(t),g1(t),...,h1(t)], [f2(t),g2(t),...,h2(t)], t,
low, high);. This syntax plots the plane curves f(t) = (f1,f2), g(t) = (g1,g2), . . . , h(t) =
(h1,h2) using the default plotting character (*). For example, char paramplot([cos(t), cos(t)+7],
[sin(t), sin(t)], t, 0, 2*%pi, ["@"]); plots two circles using the character “@” as the plotting
character.
char graph([x1 , . . . , xn ], [y1 , . . . , yn ],{ arg1 , . . . , argn }) Function
Graphs the two sets of points created by (x1 ,y1 ), . . . , (xn ,yn ). The inputs arg1 , . . . , argn are optional
arguments and are described below.
There are some variations of the char graph function. You can specify the points you want to graph
as lists of coordinate pairs using the following syntax:
char graph([[x1 , y1 ], ..., [xn , yn ]]);
You can also graph one x -domain over several y-ranges using the following syntax:
char graph(xset,[yset1 , ...,ysetn ]);
The optional arguments can be any of the following:

argn Description
integer Macsyma computes only integer values of the abscissa. If you spec-
ify integer, you cannot specify any other optional arguments.
1.1. TWO-DIMENSIONAL GRAPHICS 15

list Macsyma interprets this list as a list of plotting characters to be

used to display the function. If you do not specify list, Macsyma
uses an asterisk (*). If you want to specify a special symbol such
as ; or space, you must precede that symbol with a backslash (\).
xlabel xlabel is a string that labels the x axis of the plot. xlabel is not
evaluated by Macsyma. If xlabel is false, the axis is displayed
without a label.
ylabel ylabel is a string that labels the y axis of the plot. ylabel is not
evaluated by Macsyma. If ylabel is false, the axis is displayed
without a label.

char multigraph([[xset1 , yset1 ], . . . , [xsetn , ysetn ]], arg1 , . . . , argn ) Function

Produces a scatter graph in the Macsyma Listener involving several x-domains each with a single y-
range.
The inputs arg1 , . . . , argn are optional arguments and are described below.
The optional arguments can be any of the following:

plotheight default: 24 Option Variable

The height of the area used for character plotting. The plotting is done on a grid that is plotheight
characters high and linel wide.

[Link] Line Plotting (2D Only)

These commands normally are not needed since the main plotting commands provide the same functionality
and adjust to the type of display on your computer.
plot2(y-exps, variable, x-range, ’arg1 , . . . , ’argn ) Special Form
This function is called by the function plot when the terminal type is appropriate. It is not recom-
mended that users call this function directly.
Plots y-exps in the y direction, while variable, the x axis, takes on values speciﬁed by x-range. The
arguments can take various forms, each described in the tables below.
The input y-exp can be any of:

y-exps Action
exp plot2 plots a curve of exp against variable.
16 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

[exp1 , . . . , expn ] Plots n curves of expi against variable. Each expi is evaluated in the con-
text: float(ev(expi , variable=value from x-range, numer)). An error is
signaled if this does not result in a ﬂoating-point number.

The input x-range can be any of:

x-range Meaning
low , high where low and high evaluate to numbers. The value low may be either
greater or less than high. The input variable takes on plotnum values
equally spaced between low and high. See Section 1.3.1, page 24.

Note: The ﬁrst argument is evaluated at low ﬁrst. For example,

plot(1/x,x,−1,−3); calculates 1/(−1.0) before 1/(−3.0). This matters
only if the computation of the first argument changes a variable which in
turn changes the value returned by subsequent computation. Whether or
not low < high, min(low , high) is displayed on the left side of the plot.
This can be overridden using the optional argument special with reflect
as xfun. (see Section [Link], page 28).
low , high, integer This form has the same effect as the above except that variable takes on
only integer values between low and high inclusive.
[val1 , . . . , valn ] variable takes the values specified by the list of values.
arrayname where arrayname is the name of a declared floating-point one-dimensional
array. Such an array can be created by means of a command such as
array(arrayname, float, max-index¡);. In this case, variable takes the
values from arrayname[0] through arrayname[max-index ]. (Here, max-
index is the maximum index of arrayname.)

Optional Argument Reference

An alternative form for plot2 is plot2(y-funs, x-range, arg1 , ..., argn );. Here, y-funs must be a
function of one argument or a list of functions of one argument. The functions must be either translated
or compiled functions, and they must return a floating-point number when given floating-point or integer
arguments. This form of plot2 acts as though you had not only given an argument to the y-funs, but
also specified that argument as the variable in the form above. For example, plot2(f,-2,2); acts like
plot2(f(x), x,-2, 2);. This provides a quicker evaluation of the first argument and for that reason
no checking is done on the result. If the wrong sort of number is returned, the plot is not useful.
graph2(x-lists, y-lists, {’arg1 , . . . , ’argn }) Special Form
This function is called by the function graph when the terminal type is appropriate. It is not recom-
mended that users call this function directly.
This function points specified by the x-lists and y-lists, interpreting x-lists as a list of abscissas, and
y-lists as a list of ordinates. The arg1 , . . . , argn are optional arguments.
1.2. THREE-DIMENSIONAL GRAPHICS 17

The x-lists and y-lists can be in any of the formats below:

Format Action
[xlist1 , . . . , xlistk ] Each of the x-listi is a list of numbers. If the length of x-lists is less than
that of y-lists then x-lists is filled with x-listk to make the lengths the same.
Similarly if the length of y-lists is less than that of x-lists, then y-lists is
filled with y-listk to make the lengths the same. If the length of y-lists is
k , then k curves of y-list1 vs. x-list1 , . . . , y-listk vs. x-listk are plotted. If
one of the x-listi is shorter then the corresponding y-listi , then the extra
elements of y-listi are ignored.
[x-ptn1 , . . . , x-ptnn ] Where x-ptni evaluates to a number. Lists of numbers are interpreted as
lists of x coordinates and y coordinates. They are inserted into a list, which
is then in the form of the first case above.
arrayname Where arrayname is the name of a declared one-dimensional array of
floating-point numbers. The elements of the array are then inserted into a
list, which is inserted into yet another list, thus producing the form of the
first case above.
2d-arrayname Where 2d-arrayname is the name of a declared two-dimensional array of
floating-point numbers. This is interpreted as a list of lists of numbers,
which is exactly in the form of the first case above.

Optional Argument Reference

1.2 Three-Dimensional Graphics

Macsyma provides plotting of functions, parametric lines and surfaces, contours, data points, and vector ﬁelds
in three dimensions. You can combine several plot commands to create a composite plot which combines
several plot elements of the same or diﬀerent types.
The main commands for three-dimensional plotting are

• plot3d, Section 1.2.1, page 18

• paramplot3d, Section 1.2.2, page 20

• contourplot3d, Section 1.2.3, page 20

• graph3d, Section 1.2.4, page 21

• plotsurf, Section 1.2.5, page 21

• plot3d vect, Section 1.2.6, page 23

• complex plot3d, Section 1.2.1, page 20

18 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

1.2.1 Plotting Functions of Two Variables

The command plot3d has two different calling sequences, both of which are described below.
plot3d(z-exprs, x-var, x-range, y-var, y-range, {’arg1 , . . . , ’argn }) Special Form
Plots z-exprs against x-var and y-var . The plot consists of curves of z-exprs against x-var (the x
coordinatey-var (the y coordinate) held fixed. The arg1 , . . . , argn are optional. Perspective is used and
curves further away from the viewer have those parts of them which are hidden by the closer curves
removed.
The context of evaluation is float(ev(expi , x-var =value gotten from x-range, y-var =value gotten from
y-range, numer));
The format for x-range and y-range is the same as for plot except that if y-range is of the form low ,
high then y-var takes on plotnum1 instead of plotnum values.
The format of optional arguments is the same as for plot except that additional option variables are
available. See \3d and contour, Section 1.7.3, page 53.
plot3d(z-funs, x-range, y-range, {’arg1 , . . . , ’argn }) Special Form
This is analogous to the alternative form for plot. z-funs must be a function or list of functions of
two arguments, which must return a floating-point argument when given floating-point, or integer,
if the argument integer is used for either x-range or y-range arguments. The arg1 , . . . , argn are
optional arguments. The functions must be translated or compiled. If you expect to make several three
dimensional plots this form is recommended.
The optional arguments arg1 , . . . , argn can appear in any order. The rule for evaluating optional
arguments is as follows: If the argument is atomic, it is evaluated, and the resulting values are used.
The inputs arg1 , . . . , argn can be any of the following:

Optional Argument Reference

plot data(mat) Special Form

Plots a matrix of data, using the matrix indices as integer values of x and y coordinates.
Do example(plot data); for an example.
Examples
2 2
In the example below Figure 1.10, page 19, the expression xe−x −y is plotted as x takes on plotnum values
between −2 and 2 and y takes on plotnum1 values between −1.5 and 2.5.
(c1) plot3d(exp(-xˆ2-yˆ2)*x,x,-2,2,y,-1.5,2.5)$
In this example Figure 1.11, page 19, ﬁrst arrange for automatic translation, then deﬁne and plot a function
g.
(c2) translate:true$
(c3) g(x,y):=(mode_declare([x,y], float), exp(-x*x-y*y))$
(c4) plot3d(g,-2,2,-2,2)$

not3d Keyword
Keyword for: plot3d
The additional argument not3d to plot3d causes exactly the same points to be calculated as in the
bare plot3d. Instead of plotting a three-dimensional representation of the data, the data is plotted
1.2. THREE-DIMENSIONAL GRAPHICS 19

X Y

0.25

Z 0.00

-0.25
-2.00
-1.00
-1.00
-2.0 < X < 2.0 0.00 1.00 X
1.00
-1.5 < Y < 2.5 2.00
Y 2.00
-0.43 < Z < 0.43

Figure 1.10: Plotting a function of two variables in three dimensions

X Y

1.00

0.75

Z 0.50

0.25
-2.00
-1.00
-2.00
-1.00
-2.0 < X < 2.0 0.00 1.00 X
-2.0 < Y < 2.0 1.00
Y 2.00
3.35e-4 < Z < 1.0

Figure 1.11: Plotting a function which is expressed as a Macsyma function

20 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

in two dimensions. Speciﬁcally one curve of z versus x for each value of y is plotted and so it is a
convenient way to plot several curves on the same plot. (not3d is not available in Macsyma 2.0 and
successors or Macsyma 419 and successors. See Section [Link], page 31 for methods for superimposing
plots.)
complex plot3d(( z-expr, xvar, xlow, xhigh, yvar, ylow, yhigh {, view})) Function
Plots the possibly complex expression z-expr as a function of the variables xvar with range [xlow, xhigh]
and yvar with range [ylow,yhigh].
The optional variable view (default:’rectform) can be one or more of:

• ’rectform - plots the real and imaginary parts of z-expr.

• ’realpart - plots real part of z-expr.
• ’imagpart - plots imaginary part of z-expr.
• ’polarform - plots complex absolute value and argument of z-expr.
• ’cabs - plots complex absolute value of z-expr.
• ’carg - plots complex argument of z-expr.

If more than one of these symbols are included in view, then one plot is generated for each symbol.
Do example(complex plot3d); for an example.

1.2.2 Plotting Parametric Curves in Three Dimensions

paramplot3d([[xexpr,yexpr,zexpr]], var,varlow,varhigh) Function
Generates parametric plots of curves embedded in three dimensional space. One curve is specified
by the expressions xexpr , yexpr , and zexpr , and parameterized by the variable var . The limits on
the curve parameter var are varlow and varhigh. Multiple curves can be plotted with one call to
paramplot3d by giving a list-of-lists such as [xexpr1,yexpr1,zexpr1], [xexpr2,yexpr2,zexpr2]
as the first argument to paramplot3d.
Alternatively, each curve can also be expressed as a function which returns a list of three floating point
numbers. If only one curve is plotted, no list brackets are needed. Multiple curves can be represented
as a list of such functions.

1.2.3 Contour Plots in Three Dimensions

contourplot3d(z-funs, x-var, x-range, y-var, y-range, {’arg1 , . . . , ’argn }) Function
Creates a contour plot in the same way as contourplot, except that the plot is represented in 3
dimensions instead of being compressed into a plane. Each level contour appears at the appropriate
elevation. Options for contourplot3d are identical for those of contourplot. See also contours,
page 7 and labelcontours, page 47.
Macsyma 2.0 and its successors enable you to turn on/oﬀ and edit contour labels after generating a plot
using controls in the Macsyma Front End.
Examples
In this example, we display in Figure 1.12, page 21, the same plot as shown in the discussion of contourplot,
Section 1.1.3, page 6. This time, however, the contour lines are shown in three dimensions. This plot can
be obtained with either of the commands shown below.
(c1) plot3d(yˆ2/2+cos(x)+x/2,x,-6,6,y,-3,3,contour)$
(c1) contourplot3d(yˆ2/2+cos(x)+x/2,x,-6,6,y,-3,3)$
1.2. THREE-DIMENSIONAL GRAPHICS 21

Z –––8.0
–––7.5
Y –––7.0
X –––6.5
–––6.0
–––5.5
–––5.0
–––4.5
5.00 –––4.0
–––3.5
–––3.0
Z –––2.5
–––2.0
–––1.5
0.00 –––1.0
–––0.50
-5.00 –––-9.54e-7
–––-0.50
–––-1.0
-2.00
-6.0 < X < 6.0 0.00 X
–––-1.5
-3.0 < Y < 3.0 –––-2.0
2.00 5.00 –––-2.5
-2.5 < Z < 8.0 Y

Figure 1.12: Contour plot in three dimensions

1.2.4 Plotting Discrete Sets of Points in Three Dimensions

graph3d(x-lists, y-lists, z-lists, {’arg1 , . . . , ’argn }) Special Form
This special form takes three arguments where graph took two and interprets them as lists of x , y
and z points. It uses these points to draw lines using the three dimensional transformations. It can be
used to add lines or axes to your three dimensional plot (see Section [Link], page 32). The hidden line
routines are not used.
The arg1 , . . . , ’argn are optional arguments.
The optional arguments arg1 , . . . , argn can appear in any order. The rule for evaluating optional
arguments is as follows: If the argument is atomic, it is evaluated, and the resulting values are used.
The inputs arg1 , . . . , argn can be any of the following:

Optional Argument Reference

1.2.5 Plotting Parametric Surfaces in Three Dimensions

plotsurf(see below) Function
This function plots two-dimensional surfaces embedded in three-dimensional space. Each surface is repre-
sented in parametric form as [x(s, t), y(s, t), z(s, t)], where s and t are continuous real parameters, and x(s, t),
y(s, t) and z(s, t) are real-valued continuous functions. plotsurf plots a grid of plotnum0 × plotnum1 plot
points, and interpolates quadrilaterals between the plot points. plotsurf permits you to construct a surface
22 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

from several sections, each of which is plotted at plotnum0 × plotnum1 plot points. (plotnum0 and
plotnum1 can be lists of integers, so that each surface section can have a nodal grid of a diﬀerent integer
size.)
plotsurf has four calling syntaxes, in which the surface(s) are speciﬁed by mathematical expressions, func-
tions, or arrays:

• plotsurf([[x1,y1,z1],...,[xn,yn,zn]],s,slo,shi,t,tlo,thi), where

– The ﬁrst argument represents n surfaces with n triples of expressions. Each expression evaluates
to a ﬂoating-point number and may reference the variables s and t.
– s and t are the parameters used to specify the surface.
– slo and shi give the lower and upper limits of the parameter s.
– tlo and thi give the lower and upper limits of the parameter t.

• plotsurf([f1,f2,...,fn],slo,shi,tlo,thi), where

– The first argument represents n surfaces with n functions, each of which has two arguments and
returns a triple of floating-point numbers. Each function must have been defined before the call
to plotsurf. Note that the arguments to the functions f1,...,fn do not appear explicitly in the
call to plotsurf, either in the list [f1,...,fn] or in the other arguments to plotsurf.
– slo and shi give the lower and upper limits of the first parameter.
– tlo and thi give the lower and upper limits of the second parameter.

• plotsurf(f,slo,shi,tlo,thi)
When only one surface is plotted as in calling sequence (2), the list brackets surrounding the function
name f may be omitted.
• plotsurf([nodes,polygons])
Plots a surface which is speciﬁed by node points and polygons. In this case, the surface to be plotted
is not speciﬁed in parametric form. The two arguments are:

– nodes is a two-index array of nodal coordinates, where the first index is the node number, and the
second index is one of [0, 1, 2] to specify the first, second or third coordinate. (Arrays in Macsyma
start with index value 0.) The value of each element in the array is a floating point number.

Note: the arrays must be complete arrays.

– polygons is a one-index array, where the index is the number of a polygon in the image. Each
element of the array is a list of three or more (up to 32) integers, which speciﬁes the nodes which
form the corners of a polygonal face. Triangles, quadrilaterals and other n-gons can be mixed in
the same image. (Note that the amount of storage allocated for each face is determined by the
n-gon with the greatest number of sides.)

Do example(plotsurf); for an example. For a function to compute the curvature of a two-dimensional plot
in three-dimensional space, use curvsurf. See the Macsyma Mathematics and System Reference Manual for
more information.
plot tessellation default: 4 Option Variable
A value of 4 means that two-dimensional surfaces are tessellated with quadrilaterals. A value of 3 means
that two-dimensional surfaces are tessellated with triangles. Currently plot tessellation aﬀects the
behavior of plotsurf, and not of plot3d.
Do example(plot tessellation); for an example.
1.2. THREE-DIMENSIONAL GRAPHICS 23

Example
The following command plots a sphere which is surrounded by a torus. The result is shown in Figure 1.13,
page 23.
(c1) block([equalscale:true,plotnum0:17,plotnum1:13,
title:"A Sphere and a Torus Superimposed"],
plotsurf([[cos(ph)*sin(th),sin(ph)*sin(th),cos(th)],
[cos(ph)*(3+sin(2*th)),sin(ph)*(3+sin(2*th)),cos(2*th)]],ph,-%pi,%pi,th,0,%pi))$

Z A Sphere and a Torus Superimposed

X Y

1.00
-4.00
Z 0.00
-2.00
-4.00
-2.00
X
0.00 2.00
-4.0 < X < 4.0
2.00
-4.0 < Y < 4.0 Y 4.00
-1.0 < Z < 1.0

Figure 1.13: Plot of two parametric surfaces with one command

1.2.6 Plotting Vector Fields in Three Dimensions

plot3d vect(vecfield, x-var,x-min,x-max, y-var,y-min,y-max, z-var,z-min,z- Function
max, {’arg1,. . . ,’argn})
This function plots vector fields and direction fields in three dimensions. The calling arguments are as
follows:

• vecﬁeld is a list of three expressions, for the three components of the vector ﬁeld; or a list of three
functions; or one function whose value is a list of three values.

• x-var , x-min, x-max are the name and limits of the ﬁrst variable.

• y-var , y-min, y-max are the name and limits of the second variable.
• z-var , z-min, z-max are the name and limits of the third variable.

• The ’argi are all the optional plotting variables allowed for the special form graph3d. (However,
placing plot symbols at each point will result in plotting the symbol at the head, tail, and arrow
tips of each vector drawn.
24 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

The option variables plotnum0, plotnum1, and plotnum2 control the number of plot points in
the two horizontal directions and height directions respectively. If plotnum2 is not specified, then
plot3d vect assigns it the value of plotnum1. The arguments x-min, y-min, x-max , y-max , z-min
and z-max do not control the plot size directly. xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax, zmin, and zmax do this,
as for other plotting functions.
To plot direction fields, see plot vect head and related option variables, Section 1.1.5, page 11.
Direction fields have no vector heads and center plotted lines at each plot point.
Example
Figure 1.14, page 24, shows a sample direction field.
(c1) vect:[-y/8,x/8,sqrt(xˆ2+yˆ2)/8]$
(c2) block([plotnum0:4, plotnum1:4, plotnum2:9,
xmin:-1.0,ymin:-1.0,zmin:-1.0,xmax:1.0,ymax:1.0,zmax:1.0,viewpt:[10.,10.,2.]],
plot3d_vect(vect,x,-1,1,y,-1,1,z,-1,1,false,false,
"Plot of Spiral Vector Field [-Y/8,X/8,sqrt(xˆ2+yˆ2)/8]"))$

Z Plot of Spiral Vector Field [-Y/8,X/8,sqrt(x^2+y^2)/8]

X Y
1.00

0.50

Z 0.00

-0.50

-1.00
-1.0 < X < 1.0 -1.00 -0.50 -1.00
-1.0 < Y < 1.0 0.00 0.00 -0.50
0.50 1.00 0.50
-1.0 < Z < 1.0
Y X

Figure 1.14: Plot of a vector ﬁeld in three dimensions

1.3 Changing Plot Geometry

1.3.1 Changing the Number of Plot Points
The number of plot points and their coordinate locations are determined when a plot is ﬁrst generated by
Macsyma. While most other plot attributes can be edited in the Macsyma Front End after a plot is generated,
the number and locations of plot points can only be modiﬁed by regenerating the plot from Macsyma.
plotnum default: 100 Option Variable
The number of points plotted on each line by plot and paramplot when given the low , high type of
variable range.
1.3. CHANGING PLOT GEOMETRY 25

plotnum0 default: 20 Option Variable

plotnum1 default: 20 Option Variable
The values of plotnum0 and plotnum1 are the numbers of plot points along the first and second
coordinate axes respectively in three-dimensional plots. For parametric surfaces generated by plotsurf,
they specify the number of plot points along the direction of the first and second parameters respectively.
plotnum0 an plotnum1 affect the number of plot points generated by plot3d, plotsurf, contourplot,
contourplot3d, plot2 vect and plot3d vect.
When plotting several parametric surfaces in one call to plotsurf, plotnum0 and plotnum1 can have
as their values lists of integers, whose length is equal to the number of surfaces in the call to plotsurf.
plotsurf plots the first surface using the first elements of the lists plotnum0 and plotnum1, and so
forth.
plotnum2 default: plotnum2 Option Variable
The number of plot points in the vertical direction for plot3d vect. If plotnum2 is not specified, the
value of plotnum1 is used.

1.3.2 Coordinate Transformations

[Link] Pre-Deﬁned Coordinate Transformations
Six types of coordinate grids are recognized by the two dimensional plotting functions. Their names are
polar, log, linlog, loglin, lin, and loglog. If one of polar, log, linlog, loglin or loglog appear as an
optional argument to one of the two-dimensional plotting functions, then the plots appear on the appropriate
scale.

Grid Type Description

polar Polar coordinate system. The arguments of the plotting functions
now are used to denote θ and r instead of x and y respectively.
log or loglog Causes both axes to appear on a log10 scale.
linlog Causes the y axis to appear on a log10 scale.
loglin Causes the x axis to appear on a log10 scale.
lin Both x and y scales are linear.

Examples
Plot a circle in Figure 1.15, page 26.
(c1) equalscale:true$
(c2) plot(1, t, 0, 2*%pi, polar)$
Replot the object on a linear scale, which gives a horizontal line in Figure 1.16, page 26. (After generating
this plot, we thickened the line using the graphics controls in the Macsyma Front End so you can more easily
distinguish it from the coordinate grid lines.)
(c3) replot(true,lin), equalscale:false$
Plot an exponential on a log-linear scale in Figure 1.17, page 27:
(c4) plot(exp(x), x, 0, 10, linlog)$
√
This example plots some points on log-log scale in Figure 1.18, page 27. The slope shows that y ∼ x.
(c5) graph([1,2,5,10,50,100], [1,1.5,2.5,3,7,10], log);
When a plot is created the untransformed point values of the plotted object are saved, along with the
type of coordinate transformation. The coordinate transformation is reapplied each time you replot. You
can change the type of transformation either by using the command replot. Specifying lin as the second
argument to replot results in no coordinate transformation being performed.
26 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

1.00

0.50

Y 0.00

-0.50

-1.00
-1.00 < X < 1.0 -1.00 -0.50 0.00 0.50 1.00
-1.00 < Y < 1.00
Z = 0.00 X

Figure 1.15: Plotting in polar coordinates

4.00

2.00

0.00

-2.00
0.00 2.00 4.00 6.00

0.00 < X < 6.3; -2.1 < Y < 4.1 X

Figure 1.16: Replot the previous plot with a diﬀerent coordinate transformation
1.3. CHANGING PLOT GEOMETRY 27

10^4

10^3

Y
10^2

10^1

10^0
0.00 2.50 5.00 7.50 10.00
X
0.00 < X < 10.0; 10^0.00 < Y < 10^4.3

Figure 1.17: Plot using linear and logarithmic scales

10^1

10^0
10^0 10^1 10^2
X
10^0.00 < X < 10^2.0; 10^0.00 < Y < 10^1.0

Figure 1.18: Plot using log-log scaling

28 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

The coordinate transformation can also be changed from a Macsyma break.

[Link] User-Deﬁned Coordinate Transformations

Two Dimensional Transformations If the optional argument special appears in the call to plot, then
immediately before displaying your data, plot looks at the values of xfun (default: false) and yfun (default:
false). If the values are false the data is scaled in the normal way and is plotted. If either value is nonfalse,
then it should be the name of a function of one to three arguments which defines a transformation between
the data and the x and y screen coordinates. The standard linear scaling is still applied to the result of this
transformation, to make your plot fit on the screen. The functions must be translated or compiled and must
return a floating-point result.
The way they work is best illustrated by an example. The predefined functions polarx and polary are
equivalent to:
polarx(x,y):=y*cos(x)$
polary(x,y):=y*sin(x)$
We can set xfun and yfun to these two functions respectively, as shown in the example below. Thus x and
y become the θ and r coordinates of a polar system. This forces a transformation just prior to plotting in
Figure 1.19, page 28:
(c1) xfun:polarx$
(c2) yfun:polary$
(c3) plot(8+sin(8*x), x, 0, 2*%pi, special), equalscale:true$

5.00

Y 0.00

-5.00

-8.8 < X < 8.8 -5.00 0.00 5.00

-8.8 < Y < 8.8
Z = 0.00 X

Figure 1.19: Plot which uses built-in transformation to polar coordinates

This command sequence produces plotnum x data points, ranging from 0 to 2π and plotnum y data points,
each having value 1 in this case. These x and y values are given to the polarx and polary functions as
the ﬁrst and second arguments. The values of these two functions are then supplied to the normal scaling
routines. Thus this plot command would produce a circle if equalscale:true, otherwise an ellipse would
be produced. This plot could of course also be generated using the polar optional argument to the plot
command.
1.3. CHANGING PLOT GEOMETRY 29

The arguments of xfun and yfun are shown in Table 1.1, page 29.

Function One Arg Two Args Three args

xfun x x, y x, y, z
yfun y x, y x, y, z

Table 1.1: Arguments of xfun and yfun

The first argument to plot is interpreted as a y variable and its second argument as an x variable. For
paramplot and graph the first arguments are x variables and the second arguments are y variables. For all
the two dimensional plotting functions the z variable is 0.0. (See Section [Link], page 29 for the coordinate
conventions for the three dimensional plotting functions).
polarx and polary are predefined in the plot files. Other predefined xfuns and yfuns that may be of use
are shown below. The mode declares have been omitted.
plot_log10(x) := if x=0.0
then -90.0
else log(abs(x))/log(10.)$
reflect(x) :=-x$
ytox(x,y) := y$
xtoy(x,y) := x$
ztoy(x,y,z) := z$
ztox(x,y,z) := z$
rotatex(x,y) := x*cosang - y*sinang$
rotatey(x,y) := x*sinang + y*cosang$
initrotate(ang):=(cosang:cos(ang),sinang:sin(ang))$)
sinang and cosang are set up by initrotate.
Example
In this example Figure 1.20, page 30, the xfun and yfun cause x and y to be swapped. Thus the plot of
sin x actually displays sin−1 x vs. x.
(c1) xfun:ytox$
(c2) yfun:xtoy$
(c3) plot(sin(x),x,-%pi/2,%pi/2,special)$
The xfuns and yfuns implied by the optional arguments are shown in Table 1.2, page 29.

Argument xfun yfun

polar polarx polary
log plot log10 plot log10
linlog false plot log10
loglin plot log10 false
lin false false

Table 1.2: Specifying xfun and yfun in plot

Three Dimensional Transformations The perspective transformations work by the same xfun and
yfun mechanism documented above. If you want to change the transformation, here are the names of the
functions used, although it is probably quite easy to confuse the function that ﬁgures out the hidden lines.
The hidden line routine also makes use of the variable howclose. howclose should evaluate to the name
of a function of three arguments (x , y and z ) and should give a measure of how close the point [x , y,z ] is
30 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

1.00

Y 0.00

-1.00

-1.00 -0.50 0.00 0.50 1.00

-1.0 < X < 1.0; -1.6 < Y < 1.6 X

Figure 1.20: Plot using built-in transformation to switch X and Y

to the viewer. It is not necessary that this function return the exact distance to [x ,y,z ] but it should be a
monotonically increasing function of that distance.
The option variables centerplot, perspective and reverse determine which of the functions xfun, yfun
and howclose are used. Table 1.3, page 30, shows the names of those functions that are used for particular
settings of these option variables.

centerplot perspective reverse xfun yfun howclose

nonfalse true false p3dx p3dy howclose3d
nonfalse true true p3dxr p3dyr howclose3d
nonfalse false false np3dx np3dy howclosenp3d
nonfalse false true np3dxr np3dyr howclosenp3d
false true false old3dx old3dy howcloseold3d
false true true old3dxr old3dyr howcloseold3d
false false false oldnp3dx oldnp3dy howcloseoldnp3d
false false true oldnp3dxr oldnp3dyr howcloseoldnp3d

Table 1.3: Settings for centerplot, perspective, and reverse

initperspec(cx, cy, cz, vx, vy, vz) Function

For three dimensional perspective plots, the type of view is speciﬁed by doing initperspec(cx, cy,
cz, vx, vy, vz)$ where [vx, vy, vz ] is the viewpt and [cx, cy, cz ] is the centerplot. The optional
argument not3d causes yfun to be bound to ztoy.
1.3. CHANGING PLOT GEOMETRY 31

1.3.3 Superimposing Plots

[Link] Basic Command for Combining Plots
combine plots is the simplest way to superimpose plots.
combine plots(list of plots {, args}) Function
Combines the plots in the list list of plots into one plot. The plots must be all two dimensional or all
three dimensional. list of plots can contain plot commands or strings which evaluate to plot commands.
combine plots is a more convenient way to combine plots than the older graphics switches clear,
wait, ﬁrst, same and last.
Do example(combine plots); for an example.

[Link] The “Clear/Wait” Scheme

You can superimpose plots by governing when the plotting commands clear the screen. Two option variables
must be reset to accomplish this:
clear default: true Option Variable
If this option variable is set to true, the screen is cleared before beginning a new plot. If this option
variable is set to false, the new plot is superimposed on the most recently generated plot. Clearing
occurs just before a plot is done, so setting clear to false before generating the superimposed plots
prevents the previous plot from being cleared.
wait default: true Option Variable
If this option variable is set to true, Macsyma waits for you to send a continuation signal (type a space
character in older versions of Macsyma) before processing can continue after a plot is produced. This
setting is intended to allow you time to view the plot. When wait is set to false, Macsyma continues
to the next command without waiting for a continuation response from the user.
These two option variables should be set to false for sequential superposition of a set of plots. The example
below illustrates the use of wait and clear to superimpose four plots. The example begins by enabling
clearing and disabling waiting. This assures that the screen starts fresh, and that the superposition can
proceed without pausing. After the ﬁrst plot is displayed, clearing is disabled. Plotting continues, until just
before the last plot, when waiting is restored. After the last plot, clearing is restored.
Example
(c1) (clear:true, wait:false,
plot(...),
clear:false,
plot(...),
graph(...),
wait:true,
plot(...),
clear:true)$

[Link] The “First/Same/Last” Scheme

The ﬁrst/same/last scheme for superimposing plots is more convenient than the clear/wait scheme for
most purposes. All three of these keywords can be used as keyword arguments to nearly all the plotting
functions and to replot.
The ﬁrst/same/last scheme cannot be used with the plotting commands plotsurf and paramplot3d. Use
the clear/wait scheme with these commands.
32 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

first Keyword
Keyword for: plot, graph, paramplot, contourplot, replot, plot3d
When given as a keyword argument to a plotting function, first is used to indicate that the plot is to be
the first of a series of plots that are to be superimposed or plotted in different parts of the screen. It has
the effect of setting clear to true and wait to false before plotting and clear to false after plotting.
This option variable is in effect during the plotting process only. It does not become a property of the
plot itself.
same Keyword
Keyword for: plot, graph, paramplot, contourplot, replot
This keyword forces the plotting functions to use the same scale and window as the previous plot. It
suppresses display of the axes, the date and the plot bounds. The intention is to make superposition of
plots convenient. Specification of a title and labels is allowed, but if the previous plot which defines the
scale of this plot did not have them they may appear in the wrong place, wrapped around the screen. If
you want to specify a title, then you should probably specify a null title " " in the original plot. This
option variable is in effect during the plotting process only. It does not become a property of the plot
itself.
last Keyword
Keyword for: plot, graph, paramplot, contourplot, replot, plot3d
When given as a keyword argument to a plotting function, last is used to say that this plot is to be
the last of a series of plots that are to be superimposed or plotted in different parts of the screen. It
has the effect of setting wait to true before plotting and clear to true after plotting. This option
variable is in effect during the plotting process only. It does not become a property of the plot itself.
Examples
This example illustrates how to superimpose two curves using one plotting command in Figure 1.21, page 32.
(c1) plot([x+1,xˆ2+1], x, -1, 1)$

2.00

1.50

Y 1.00

0.50

0.00
-1.00 -0.50 0.00 0.50 1.00

-1.0 < X < 1.0; 0.00 < Y < 2.0 X

Figure 1.21: Plotting two curves with one plotting command

1.3. CHANGING PLOT GEOMETRY 33

To superimpose plots generated with separate plotting commands, the normal sequence is:
(plot(..., first),
plot(..., same),
plot(..., same),
...
plot(..., same, last)
This example, Figure 1.22, page 33, superimposes three curves, and uses line colors (which do not show in
this book) and plot point symbols to distinguish the curves. The option variables ymin and ymax are used
to clip the plot of the tangent function.
(c1) plot(sin(x),x,0,2*%pi,first)$
(c2) plot(cos(x),x,0,2*%pi,same,[1])$
(c3) plot(tan(x),x,0,2*%pi,same,last,[510]), ymax:4, ymin:-4$

4.00 m m

m
2.00
m

m m
m m
Y 0.00 m m m
m m
m
m
-2.00

-4.00 m
0.00 2.00 4.00 6.00

0.00 < X < 6.3; -4.0 < Y < 4.0 X

Figure 1.22: Superimposition of plots using the ﬁrst/same/last scheme

[Link] Merging Plot Files

merge plot files is available only in versions of Macsyma with file-based graphics, which includes Macsyma
419 and successors but not Macsyma 2.0 and successors.
merge plot files([infile1, infile2]) Special Form
merge plot files([infile1, infile2, . . . ], outfile) Special Form
merge plot files([[infile],[[tx,ty,tz], [sx,sy,sz]]], infile2], outfile) Special Form
This command merges plot files into a new file. The resulting image is an overlay of the input plots
using range and perspective information from the aggregate. This function takes 1 required and 1
optional argument.
The required first argument is a list of infile entries. Each entry may be either the name of a file or
a list consisting of a filename followed by a transformation list. The transformation list consists of a
translation and a scaling, each specified by a list of 3 floating point numbers, one for each axis. The
34 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

effect is to transform the infile data first by the translation then by the scaling, before merging it in the
outfile. The default translation is [0, 0, 0] and the default scaling is [1, 1, 1].
The optional second argument, outfile, is specified as a file name or file pathname in double quota-
tion marks. If not supplied, outfile defaults to plot file. When file names are used without path-
names, Macsyma assumes that the files are located in the directory plot directory (which defaults to
macsyma:plots;) with a filetype of plot file type (which defaults to plt).

1.4 Changing Plot Appearance

There are usually three ways to change the appearance of a plot in Macsyma.

• You can alter the plot under program control (from the keyboard, or in a batch ﬁle) at the time it is
generated, using the various plotting commands and option variables in Macsyma.

• You can alter the appearance of the plot after it is generated, using the graphics editing controls in
the Macsyma Front End.

• You can alter the appearance of the plot after it is generated using graphics styles in the Macsyma
Front End. You can specify a graphics style under program control.

This section principally discusses the programmatic methods of altering plot appearance. You can ﬁnd more
information about graphics editing controls and styles in the Macsyma Front End in the Scientiﬁc Notebook
Interface Reference Manual.

1.4.1 Changing the View of the Plot

[Link] Changing Plot Scale and Perspective
By default, Macsyma scales plots automatically to be as large as possible, while still allowing plots to fit
comfortably in the available screen area. Macsyma provides two ways to change the scaling of plots with
keyboard commands.
plot size default: 75 Option Variable
Determines the size of the plotted object as a percentage of the linear size of the plotting window in
the Macsyma Front End. plot size must be an integer between 2 and 200 inclusive. See also Scale:
Initial Height % and andScale: Initial Width % The Attribute Notebook: Graphics Height
has a default value of 4 inches.
By default, Macsyma scales plots by different factors in different dimensions, so that plots fill most of the
available screen area. While for many purposes this is desirable, sometimes you want the different directions
in a plot to be scaled equally (for example, so that a circle appears as a circle and not as an ellipse). The
option variable equalscale controls the relative scaling of different directions in plots.
equalscale default: false Option Variable
If this option variable is set to true, plot ensures that the scales are the same in both directions. Thus
if the window is rectangular, and equalscale is false, a circle appears as an ellipse, whereas with
equalscale:true; it appears as a circle.
Macsyma 2.0 and successors enable you to change the scale, perspective, viewpoint and many other attributes
of a plot after the plot is generated, using the controls in the Graphics | Camera View dialog in the
Macsyma Front End. equalscale corresponds to the attribute settings in the Macsyma Front End shown in
the Table 1.4, page 35.
1.4. CHANGING PLOT APPEARANCE 35

Dimensions equalscale World Scaling Window Scaling

2D false Normalized Fit to pane
2D true None Isotropic
3D false Normalized Isotropic
3D true None Isotropic

Table 1.4: Settings for centerplot, perspective, and reverse

[Link] Changing Viewpoint and Orientation

The option variables viewpt, centerplot, plot roll, perspective and reverse, allow you to govern the
perspective view of a plot.
viewpt default: viewpt Option Variable
viewpt can be set to a list of three numbers which specify the rectangular coordinates of the viewpoint
from which the observer views the plot. A projection of the plotted object is made onto a plane
perpendicular to the line of sight, which is a line joining the points viewpt and centerplot. After
a plot is generated, the value of viewpt which was used to generate the plot is stored in the system
variable viewpt1.
centerplot default: centerplot Option Variable
centerplot can be set to a list of three numbers which specify the rectangular coordinates of a point
on the line of sight. The plotted object is projected with parallel rays onto a plane perpendicular to
a line joining viewpt and centerplot. After a plot is generated, the value of centerplot which was
used to generate the plot is stored in the system variable centerplot1.
When a plot is first generated, the default distance between the viewpoint and the object is determined
to give a good perspective view of the object. After the plot is generated, changing viewpt will change
the viewpoint without changing the effective centerplot, so that the distance between the viewpoint and
the object changes. If you change centerplot, the default algorithm is again applied to determine the
viewing distance.
plot roll default: 0.0 Option Variable
This is the angle of rotation (in degrees) of a plotted image about the line of sight. When using the
default viewpoint (viewpt) in the first octant, a value of zero means that the x − y plane is horizontal.
If viewpt and centerplot are unbound, the default, then effective values of these variables are chosen as
follows.

1. The extreme values of the coordinates are determined. This gives the two points min:[xmin,ymin,
zmin], max:[xmax , ymax , zmax ].
2. centerplot is chosen as (min + max )/2
3. viewpt is chosen as max + 3(max − min).
4. The view is chosen so that the z axis is vertical, the x axis is increasing towards you to the left and
the y axis is increasing towards you to the right.

Example
This plot was shown earlier to illustrate the use of plot3d, Section 1.10, page 19.
(c1) plot3d(exp(-xˆ2-yˆ2)*x,x,-2,2,y,-1.5,2.5)$
Move the viewpoint.
(c2) viewpt:[-10,10,0.5]$
36 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

(c3) replot();
(c4) reset(viewpt)$

4.00 m m

m
2.00
m

m m
m m
Y 0.00 m m m
m m
m
m
-2.00

-4.00 m
0.00 2.00 4.00 6.00

0.00 < X < 6.3; -4.0 < Y < 4.0 X

Figure 1.23: Plot with adjusted viewpoint

Before you set either viewpt or centerplot, you might want to look at the values of viewpt1 or center-
plot1, the values that plot3d assumed in doing the previous plot. Likewise xmax3d, ymin3d etc. are the
values of xmax, ymin used by plot3d to determine the default viewpt and centerplot.
perspective default: true Option Variable
If this option variable is set to false, it causes plot3d to use a nonperspective view. This is equivalent
to extending the viewing position out to inﬁnity along a line connecting viewpt and centerplot.
Macsyma 2.0 and successors enable you to alter the viewpoint, center, scale and many related attributes of
a graphic after it has been generated, using graphics controls in the Macsyma Front End.

1.4.2 Appearance of Plotted Points, Lines and Surfaces

[Link] Line Types, Line Colors, and Plot Symbols
If a list (or an atom that evaluates to a list) appears as an optional argument to a plotting function, then
that list is taken as a speciﬁcation of the line type to be used for the plot. The elements of the list are
evaluated once and the elements of the resultant list must be all integers. If this list has the form [type1 ,
type2 , . . . , typei , . . . , typek ] then the ith curve is plotted with line of type typei . The (k + 1)th curve is plotted
with line of type type1 and so on. Omitting this optional argument is equivalent to specifying [0], that is, all
the curves are plotted with line of type 0. A line of type 0 is solid line with no symbols.
The curves drawn by the plot functions may be drawn as one of nine types of colored and dashed line, with
one of nine types of symbol drawn at the data points. In general the line type typei is a positive integer of
the form abcd where a, b, c, and d are digits between 0 and 9, where leading zeroes may be omitted. The
four digits have the following meanings:
1.4. CHANGING PLOT APPEARANCE 37

d Line-type. Line-type 0, the default, is a solid line. Line-type of 9 defaults to no line.

c Symbol-type. Symbol 0 is deﬁned to mean no symbol. Symbol 9 is deﬁned to mean a dot.

b Number of data points with no symbol between the data points with a symbol. If b = 9 then b is set to
plotnum-1. If b = 98 then b is set to plotnum-2. plotnum is taken here to mean the number of point
in the plot.

a The ﬁrst symbol is put at data point number 1 if a = 0 and at b + 2 − a otherwise.

Table 1.5, page 37, gives some examples of line and symbol speciﬁcation.

abcd Meaning
0 Plain line.
10 Symbol 1 at every point; plain line.
19 Symbol 1 at every point.
99 A dot at every point.
124 Symbol 2 at every other point; line 4.
9874 Line 4 with symbol 7 at end points.
9974 Line 4 with symbol 7 at ﬁrst point.
19974 Line 4 with symbol 7 at last point.

Table 1.5: Examples of Line and Symbol Speciﬁcation

Examples
The following commands plot three trigonometric functions with different line types and different plot sym-
bols. sin(x) appears with the default line type 0 (solid red), cos(x) appears with line type 1 (solid blue), and
tan(x) appears with line type 0, and plot symbol type 1 at every sixth plot point (skipping five plot points
between plot symbols). The plot is shown in Section 1.22, page 33, Figure 1.22, page 33.
(c1) plot(sin(x),x,0,2*%pi,first)$
(c2) plot(cos(x),x,0,2*%pi,same,[1])$
(c3) plot(tan(x),x,0,2*%pi,same,last,[510]), ymax:4, ymin:-4$
Plot some sinusoidal curves with different colors and different plot point symbols, skipping ten plot points
between plot symbols in Figure 1.24, page 38.
(c1) plot([cos(3*x)-7,sin(2*x)-4,cos(x),sin(2*x)+4,cos(3*x)+7],
x,0,2*%pi,[510,521,532,543,554]), ymin:-10, ymax:10$

Note: This graph has been enhanced with the Macsyma Front End program to produce better appearing
grey scales and symbols rather than color for xerox reproduction. Other graphical attributes have been
edited after the plot was generated to change axis labels and locations as well.
Macsyma 2.0 and successors enable you to alter the appearance of plot points and plotted lines after a plot
has been generated, using graphics controls in the Macsyma Front End.
38 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

10.00

Y 0.00

-10.00
0.00 2.00 4.00 6.00

0.00 < X < 6.3; -10. < Y < 10. X

Figure 1.24: Plot of ﬁve functions with diﬀerent line and point styles

[Link] Surface Colors, Lighting and Mesh

color function default: color rainbow in z Option Variable

The symbolic name of a function of the coordinates [X1,X2,X3], whose value at each point determines
the color to be used at that point. For example,
(c1) colorf(X1,X2,X3):= sqrt(x1*X1+X2*X2+X3*X3)$
(c2) color_function:colorf$
makes the color hue a function of the radius of each plot point from the coordinate center (0,0,0). As
the color hue index increases through the interval [0.,1.], the hue ranges from red through the rainbow
back to red. For values greater than 1.0, the fractional part of the color index is used to obtain a value
in the range [0.,1.] . In this example, the illumination and intensity of color are set automatically.
In Macsyma 2.0 and successors, color function has these additional features.

• color function is a function of the actual coordinates. If you want the color function to use
normalized coordinates, then you should write the function using the variable combinations (x -
xmin1 )/(xmax1 -xmin1 ) and so forth. The values of color function are not normalized, but are
used as calculated.
• color function can control intensity-hue-saturation (IHS) color coordinates or red-green-blue
(RGB) color coordinates. The color function must return a list of three numbers or a list of three
numbers plus a symbol.
• In the Macsyma Front End, users can change many aspects of the color distribution of lines and
surfaces after a plot has been generated.
• In the Macsyma Front End, users can set the colors and positions of two spot lights and the color
of one ambient light.

For example,
1.4. CHANGING PLOT APPEARANCE 39

• [0.667,0.833,0.50] speciﬁes IHS color coordinates.

• [0.667,0.833,0.5,IHS] speciﬁes the same IHS color coordinates.

• [0.82,0.82,0.918,RGB] speciﬁes the same color in RGB coordinates.

Macsyma 2.0 and successors enable you to change colors, lighting and many other properties of plotted
points, lines and surfaces after a plot is generated, using commands in the Macsyma Front End.

[Link] Colors
Colors of plotted lines are controlled from Macsyma by line type codes of the form ”[integer]” as a keyword
to the plotting command. See the Macsyma Reference Manual for more information.
Colors of plotted surfaces are controlled from Macsyma by the option variable color function.
Macsyma has the following built-in colors.

color red color dark red color orange

color yellow color olive color yellow green
color green color dark green color cyan
color blue green color blue color dark blue
color magenta color purple color white
color gray color black

Table 1.6: Built-in Colors

color red default: Option Variable

color dark red default: Option Variable
color orange default: Option Variable
color yellow default: Option Variable
color olive default: Option Variable
color yellow green default: Option Variable
color green default: Option Variable
color dark green default: Option Variable
color cyan default: Option Variable
color blue green default: Option Variable
color blue default: Option Variable
color dark blue default: Option Variable
color magenta default: Option Variable
color purple default: Option Variable
color white default: Option Variable
color gray default: Option Variable
40 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

color black default: Option Variable

To make a plotted surface all of one color, say magenta, set color function: color magenta before
submitting the plot command.

1.4.3 Changing Bounding Box and Axes

Macsyma 2.0 and successors enable you to alter the appearance of the bounding box and axes in a plot after
it has been generated, using graphics controls in the Macsyma Front End.

[Link] Bounding Box and Clipping Planes

All Macsyma plotting commands accept arguments which specify the ranges of the independent variables
which are to used to generate the plotted object. In the case of parametric plotting commands like param-
plot, paramplot3d and plotsurf, these arguments define limits of parameters values and do not by them-
selves define limits to the coordinate ranges.
Macsyma provides option variables for specifying the range of coordinate values for the independent and
dependent variables to appear in a plot. Macsyma also reports, as the values of system variables, the limiting
values of the coordinates after a plot has been generated.
All of the plotting option variables whose default state is unbound, such as xmax, have corresponding system
variables whose names are obtained by appending a “1” to the end of the unbound option variable name:
xmax1. These system variables should be read only, not set, and their values may be loosely defined to be
the value that plot assumed for the option variable. The value is correct only if plot has calculated it.
For example:
Example
(c1) plot(x, x, 0, 10.1)$
(c2) ymax;
(d2) ymax
(c3) ymax1;
(d3) 11.0
xmax1 default: xmax1 System Variable
Contains the maximum value of the x -coordinate of the most recently produced plot, computed after
the transformation functions were applied, and after rounding to the nearest tickmark. xmax1 has
an associated option variable xmax. The maximum and minimum values of xmax that plot obtains
are rounded up and down to the nearest tick mark, unless ticknum is negative. See Section [Link],
page 45.
xmax default: xmax Option Variable
In choosing the scale for a plot, plot looks at the maximum and minimum values of xmax of the points
it has calculated. However if xmax has a numeric value then that value is used instead of the one found
from the points themselves. To get back to the default value, type kill(xmax);.
This option variable is especially important when changing the scale of three dimensional plots, because
xmax refers to the value after the perspective transformations, and so may be quite unrelated to the
data points.
ymax1 default: ymax1 System Variable
Contains the maximum value of the y-coordinate of the most recently produced plot, computed after
the transformation functions were applied, and after rounding to the nearest tickmark. ymax1 has
an associated option variable ymax. The maximum and minimum values of ymax that plot obtains
are rounded up and down to the nearest tick mark, unless ticknum is negative. See Section [Link],
page 45.
1.4. CHANGING PLOT APPEARANCE 41

ymax default: ymax Option Variable

In choosing the scale for a plot, plot looks at the maximum and minimum values of ymax of the points
it has calculated. However if ymax has a numeric value then that value is used instead of the one found
from the points themselves. To get back to the default value, type kill(ymax);.
This option variable is especially important when changing the scale of three dimensional plots, because
ymax refers to the value after the perspective transformations, and so may be quite unrelated to the
data points.
zmax1 default: zmax1 System Variable
Contains the maximum value of the z -coordinate of the most recently produced plot, computed after
the transformation functions were applied, and after rounding to the nearest tickmark. zmax1 has
an associated option variable zmax. The maximum and minimum values of zmax that plot obtains
are rounded up and down to the nearest tick mark, unless ticknum is negative. See Section [Link],
page 45.
zmax default: zmax Option Variable
In choosing the scale for a plot, plot looks at the maximum and minimum values of zmax of the points
it has calculated. However if zmax has a numeric value then that value is used instead of the one found
from the points themselves. To get back to the default value, type kill(zmax);.
This option variable is especially important when changing the scale of three dimensional plots, because
zmax refers to the value after the perspective transformations, and so may be quite unrelated to the
data points.
xmin1 default: xmin1 System Variable
Contains the maximum value of the x -coordinate of the most recently produced plot, computed after
the transformation functions were applied, and after rounding to the nearest tickmark. xmin1 has
an associated option variable xmin. The maximum and minimum values of xmin that plot obtains
are rounded up and down to the nearest tick mark, unless ticknum is negative. See Section [Link],
page 45.
xmin default: xmin Option Variable
In choosing the scale for a plot, plot looks at the maximum and minimum values of xmin of the points
it has calculated. However if xmin has a numeric value then that value is used instead of the one found
from the points themselves. To get back to the default value, type kill(xmin);.
This option variable is especially important when changing the scale of three dimensional plots, because
xmin refers to the value after the perspective transformations, and so may be quite unrelated to the
data points.
ymin1 default: ymin1 System Variable
Contains the maximum value of the y-coordinate of the most recently produced plot, computed after
the transformation functions were applied, and after rounding to the nearest tickmark. ymin1 has
an associated option variable ymin. The maximum and minimum values of ymin that plot obtains
are rounded up and down to the nearest tick mark, unless ticknum is negative. See Section [Link],
page 45.
ymin default: ymin Option Variable
In choosing the scale for a plot, plot looks at the maximum and minimum values of ymin of the points
it has calculated. However if ymin has a numeric value then that value is used instead of the one found
from the points themselves. To get back to the default value, type kill(ymin);.
This option variable is especially important when changing the scale of three dimensional plots, because
ymin refers to the value after the perspective transformations, and so may be quite unrelated to the
data points.
42 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

zmin1 default: zmin1 System Variable

Contains the maximum value of the z -coordinate of the most recently produced plot, computed after
the transformation functions were applied, and after rounding to the nearest tickmark. zmin1 has
an associated option variable zmin. The maximum and minimum values of zmin that plot obtains
are rounded up and down to the nearest tick mark, unless ticknum is negative. See Section [Link],
page 45.
zmin default: zmin Option Variable
In choosing the scale for a plot, plot looks at the maximum and minimum values of zmin of the points
it has calculated. However if zmin has a numeric value then that value is used instead of the one found
from the points themselves. To get back to the default value, type kill(zmin);.
This option variable is especially important when changing the scale of three dimensional plots, because
zmin refers to the value after the perspective transformations, and so may be quite unrelated to the
data points.
zmax1 default: zmax1 System Variable
zmax1 is of use only for contour plots. It is equal to zmax if it has a value, or to the maximum value
of the first argument to contourplot, if zmax is unbound. Its value is meaningless if contours is a
list, because contourplot does not need to compute zmax in that case.
zmax default: zmax Option Variable
This option variable is useful for controlling contour plotting. It can be set to the maximum value of z
for which a contour is desired. Its value is ignored if contours is a list, because contourplot does not
need to compute zmax in that case.
zmin1 default: zmin1 System Variable
zmin1 is of use only for contour plots. It is equal to zmin if it has a value, or to the minimum value
of the first argument to contourplot, if zmin is unbound. Its value is meaningless if contours is a
list, because contourplot does not need to compute zmin in that case.
zmin default: zmin Option Variable
This option variable is useful for controlling contour plotting. It can be set to the minimum value of z
for which a contour is desired. Its value is ignored if contours is a list, because contourplot does not
need to compute zmin in that case.
The functions xmax3d, xmin3d, ymax3d, ymin3d, zmax3d, and zmin3d are of use only for three di-
mensional plots. These are the values of the three dimensional data before transforming it to two dimensions.
This information is valid only if plot3d calculated it to determine either the default viewpt or the default
centerplot.
The functions viewpt1 and centerplot1 are also only of use with three dimensional plots. They are useful
to look at before you change viewpt or centerplot.
Examples
Consider the following plot Figure 1.25, page 43, of a function with a singularity at the origin. Because
plotnum0 and plotnum1 default to even numbers, there is no plot point at the singularity, and the plot
has a finite height.
(c1) plot3d(1/(xˆ2+yˆ2),x,-3,3,y,-3,3)$
The option variable zmax can be set to clip this plot at a specified height as shown in Figure 1.26, page 43.
(c2) zmax:2;
(d2) 2
(c3) replot()$
Macsyma 2.0 and successors enable you to change many properties of the bounding box and axes in plots
after a plot is generated, using controls in the Macsyma Front End.
1.4. CHANGING PLOT APPEARANCE 43

Y
X

0.00

-2.00
0.00
2.00 0.00 2.00
X -2.00
Y

-3.0 < X < 3.0

-3.0 < Y < 3.0
5.56e-2 < Z < 5.50e+11

Figure 1.25: Plot of a singular function

X Y

2.00
1.50
Z 1.00
0.50 -2.00

-2.00
X
0.00
-3.0 < X < 3.0 2.00
-3.0 < Y < 3.0 Y 2.00
5.56e-2 < Z < 2.0

Figure 1.26: Plot of a singular function which is truncated at z=2

44 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

Macsyma 2.0 provides a clipping slider to slice through 3D objects. It is located in the Camera View
dialog in the Macsyma Front End.

[Link] Plot Axes, Axis Titles and Axis Numbers

xlabel default: xlabel Option Variable

The value of this option variable can be set to a string, which will appear as the label for the X-axis
(the axis for the first variable) in any 2D or 3D plot drawn by Macsyma. See also label, page 45.
ylabel default: ylabel Option Variable
The value of this option variable can be set to a string, which will appear as the label for the Y-axis
(the axis for the second variable) in any 2D or 3D plot drawn by Macsyma. See also label, page 45.
plotnumprec default: 2 Option Variable
This option variable controls the number of digits of precision displayed to the right of the decimal
point in axis labels, bounds labels and contour labels.
Example
The following example Figure 1.27, page 44 defines text titles for the X and Y axes and for the plot. It
also shows how plotnumprec alters the number of significant digits in the axis label numbers and the
bounds numbers.
(c1) plotnumprec:4$
(c2) plot(exp(x),x,0,3,"x","exp(x)","Plot of the Exponential Function")$

Plot of the Exponential Function

20.0000

15.0000
exp(x)

5.0000

0.0000 1.0000 2.0000 3.0000

0.0000 < X < 3.000; 1.000 < Y < 20.09 x

Figure 1.27: Number precision control and titles for X and Y axes

Macsyma 2.0 and successors enable you to alter the number of digits used in each label separately after
a plot has been generated, using controls in the Macsyma Front End.
Macsyma 2.0 and successors enable you to edit the axes and axis titles in many ways after generating a plot,
using controls in the Macsyma Front End.
1.4. CHANGING PLOT APPEARANCE 45

ticknum default: 10 Option Variable

Specifies the number of ticks on each axis. The ticks always come at “nice” values of the x or y
variable. “Nice” values are defined to be multiples of k 10n where n is an integer and k is 1, 2 or 5.
Setting ticknum to a negative number causes about abs(ticknum) ticks to be drawn, but plot will
not round the maximum and minimum values on your axes to the nearest tickmark. ticknum can be
a list of two numbers the first referring to the ticks on the x axis and the second to the ticks on the y
axis.
ticknum works in Macsyma 419, but not in Macsyma 2.0, where the Macsyma Front End supplies
interactive controls for the number of major and minor tick marks.

1.4.4 Changing Text Labels in Plots

Macsyma enables you to specify a text title for each plot, axis titles, contour labels, and to control the
display of bounding coordinate values and other features.

[Link] Plot Titles and Annotations

If the optional arguments to the plotting functions are not any of the recognized keywords such as ﬁrst or
last, they can be speciﬁcations for the x-label , y-label and the title of the plot. If it is (a) an atom, (b) of
the form ’symbol or ’(...), (c) of the form ev(...); or concat(...); or label(...);, then the label is
evaluated, otherwise it is used literally.

Note: The evaluation of ’symbl is symbl for all symbl, so if you want to get a label of symbl and symbl
has a value, then use ’symbl. "symbl" also works in most instances. See Section [Link], page 45.
If one of these is false, then nothing is printed. Only as many of the three to be unambiguous need be
specified; thus if only a y-label is required then false, y-label would be sufficient. To avoid confusion with
the line-type list, none of these option variables can be a list. See Section 1.3, page 24.
title default: title Option Variable
The value of this option variable can be set to a string, which will appear as the title in any plot drawn
by Macsyma. See also xlabel and ylabel.
label(’text1 , . . . , ’textn ) Special Form
This is a special form of concat for use with plot. It takes any number of arguments and returns an
atom containing the arguments concatenated together. It differs from concat in the following respects:

• It inserts spaces between the items.

• The arguments need not be atoms.

• If an argument is of the form ’symbl, then symbl appears in the result.

• Otherwise label evaluates the argument. If the value diﬀers from the argument, the equation
arg=value appears in the result, otherwise just value.

The label is evaluated inside an errcatch, so if you have an error in the evaluation of your label, an
error message is displayed, but the plot succeeds without a label.
46 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

The Case A=15.0 B=2.0 F=30.0

10.0000
Amplitude

-10.0000

0.0000 0.2500 0.5000 0.7500 1.0000

0.0000 < X < 1.000; -15.00 < Y < 15.00 Time

Figure 1.28: Plot with parameter values in the title

Examples
This example Figure 1.28, page 46, produces a plot in which the plot title contains the value of the variable
a. The oscillating function and its envelope appear in diﬀerent colors on a color monitor
(c1) (a:15.0, b:2.0, f:30.)$
(c2) plot([a*exp(-b*t),-a*exp(-b*t),a*exp(-b*t)*cos(f*t)],t,0,1,
"Time","Amplitude",concat("The Case ",label(a,b,f)),[0,0,1])$
In the optional arguments to replot, use false if you do not want to change the corresponding label. If you
want to remove a label during replot, use none. See Section 1.6.1, page 50.
Macsyma 2.0 and successors enable you to edit the plot title text, title font and title locations after generating
a plot. It also enables you to add a text caption with a comment about the plot.
1.5. ANIMATION 47

[Link] Contour Labels

labelcontours default: true Option Variable

If this option variable is set to true, then contourplot and contourplot display a legend indicating
the value of z for each contour. See also contours,plotnumprec and .
Macsyma 2.0 and successors enable you to alter the contour labels (but not the number of contours) after
the plot is generated, using the controls in the Graphics | Decorations dialog.

[Link] Other Text Labels

plotbounds default: true Option Variable

Plots include a box at the bottom of the plot which displays the maximum and minimum of x and y
(and z in 3D plots). Setting plotbounds to false suppresses display of the plot bounds box.
noprint default: false Option Variable
As a default, the two dimensional plotting functions include a line at the bottom of the plot, called
the dataline. The dataline displays the maximum and minimum of x and y. Setting noprint to true
suppresses display of the dataline. In newer versions of Macsyma, this is accomplished by the option
variable plotbounds.
dateplot default: false Option Variable
If dateplot is set to true, the date is given at the top right corner of the plot, in a long form if no title
is speciﬁed, or in a shorter form if a title is speciﬁed.
Macsyma 2.0 and successors enable you to alter the bounds box and other text labels after the plot is
generated, using the controls in the Macsyma Front End.

1.4.5 Specifying a Graphics Style

plot style default: normal Option Variable
Name of the default MFE graphics style to apply to a Macsyma graphic in MFE.
See the on-line documentation or the Scientiﬁc Notebook Interface Reference Manual or the on-line
documentation for information about graphics styles. See also your release notes for information about
graphics styles in your version of Macsyma.

1.5 Animation
Macsyma 2.0 and successors contain extensive facilities for deﬁning animations of scientiﬁc graphics. Ani-
mations are of two types:

• Animation of the shape of the plotted object. This can be most easily accomplished using the command
plot animate. The color function can also be animated using plot animate.

• Animate many plot attributes which are described by ﬂoating point values, such as the viewpoint or
color model. These may be animated from the Graphics | Attribute Editor dialog in the Macsyma
Front End.

In order to start animation, open the Graphics | Animation dialog or depress the toolbar button that looks
like a rocket ship.
48 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

1.5.1 Deﬁning Animations With the Plot Animate Command

The plot animate command provides a very simple way to animate the movement and change of shape of
plotted objects. You simply wrap it around any static Macsyma plotting command to animate it.
plot animate(param,lo,hi,’plot command) Special Form
Animates the plot command with animation parameter param, which varies between lo and hi values
during the animation. plot command can any static Macsyma 2D or 3D plot command, where the
parameter param is included in the plotted expression.
The command plot animate accepts the keyword cyclic, which enables animations to piece together
smoothly the beginning and end of a periodic animation.
Do example(plot animate); for an example.
plotnum animate default: 10 Option Variable
The number of frames in the animation produced by the plot animate command.
Example
The following command produces an animated 3D plot. After executing these commands, you can start the
animation by selecting the plot, and clicking on the toolbar button which looks like a rocket ship.
(c1) plot_animate(t,0,2*%pi,plot3d(sin(x)*cos(y)*cos(t),x,-,3,3,y,-3,3),cyclic)$

1.5.2 Deﬁning Animations in the Macsyma Front End

After a plot has been generated in Macsyma 2.0, it can be animated using plotting controls in the Graphics
| Attribute Editor dialog in the Macsyma Front End.
Clicking on the Anim button exposes the animation editing sections of the dialog. Clicking Anim again returns
the dialog to its smaller ”static” configuration. When expanded only animatable attributes are displayed.
Animatable attributes include all Integer, Float, Color, Vertex, and Box (BCube) valued attributes.
Animations are specified as a set of transitions on one or more animatable attributes. All animatable
attributes support the three transition functions described below:
Constant Transitions - These consist of a start value and a duration. Constant transitions can be sequenced
to created step function like variation in an attribute.
Linear Transitions - These have both start and end values. They transition linearly between start and end
values over their duration.
Smooth Transitions - These are similar to linear transitions except the transitions starts out slowly, reaches
a maximum rate at the midpoint, and then slows down again as it reaches the endpoint.
To animate an attribute first select it. Then use the Transitions section to select a transition function
and add it to the attribute’s transition list. After you add the transition select it and use the Duration
thumbwheel to set its duration. Add additional transitions to the list as desired. The Transitions list tracks
the time interval during which the transition will occur.
When you first add or insert a transition its start and end values are set up based on the start and end
values of its temporal ”neighbors”. You can change these settings by entering new values in the Animation
Transition Values section.
On the lower left the Camera Settings group is used to set the total time and frame count for the animation.
The time you set in Current Time determines what stage of the animation you see if you press the Preview
key. Make sure that the time you set for Total Time is at least as long as the longest transition list you set
up. Otherwise all the transitions will not be complete at the end of the Total Time interval.
1.5. ANIMATION 49

1.5.3 Playback of Animation Sequences

Once an animation is deﬁned, it can be controlled from the Graphics | Animation dialog. This dialog can
be opened from the Graphics menu which appears when a graphics section is selected, or by clicking on the
toolbar button which looks like a movie camera. This dialog has several types of controls.

• A button for building bitmaps. It is generally best to create bitmaps for each frame in an animated
sequence. This enables the animation to proceed at higher speed, which becomes independent of the
complexity of the image being animated.

• A button to play the animation.

• A button to pause the animation during playback.

• A button to move to the next frame and a button to move to the previous frame in an animation
sequence.

• A button to stop an animation.

This Animation dialog also contains controls for modifying the behavior of the animation sequence.

• A thumbwheel control for the number of frames in the animation sequence.

Note: If you wish to change the number of frames in a plot where the shape of the plotted object is
animated, then it is usually best to change the number of frames programmatically using the option
variable plot animate regenerate the plot using the plot animate command. Altering the number
of frames from the Graphics | Animation dialog in this situation will generally result in animations
which are not smooth, because the controls in the Macsyma Front End cannot generate new data for
shapes of the plotted object.

• A thumbwheel control for total time in the animation.

• A thumbwheel control for animation speed. You can alter the number in the control to alter the speed
of the animation.

• A checkbox for continuous motion, which makes the animation into an inﬁnitely repeating cycle.
• A checkbox for bouncing oﬀ the end of the animation (and returning to time zero by running the
animation backwards).
• A checkbox for running the animation in reverse.

You can also run an animation by depressing the toolbar button which looks like a rocket ship. This method
of playing back an animation does not give you access to any of the other controls in the Graphics |
Animation dialog.
50 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

1.6 Screen Display, Files and Hardcopy

1.6.1 Screen Display and Redisplay
replot(plotname, ’arg1 , . . . , ’argn ) Special Form
Replots the plot named plotname. Either replot(true); or replot(); will replot the last plot. The
arg1 , . . . , argn are optional arguments. If any of the optional arguments have been changed since the
plot was saved, the new values of the optional arguments are used.
If the arrays of plotname were destroyed either by a killplots(plotname); or by save-ing plotname
and loadfile-ing it into another Macsyma, replot checks to see if plotname was ever saved using the
saveplots command if it was it finds the filename under which it was saved and then attempts a
loadplots(filename); (but taking care not to change the current file defaults) and replots plotname if
it was found in the file.
The optional arguments can be any of the optional arguments to the main plotting functions. These
optional arguments are merged in with those supplied to the original plot. The exceptions are first, last
and same, top, bottom, left and right, and dont. See Sections [Link], 1.3, and 1.6.1. These optional
arguments do not stick around with the plot. If you want to replot the last plot with some optional
arguments supplied you must use the fully specified form replot(plotname, arg1 , ..., argn );. The
form replot(true, arg1 , ..., argn ); will not work because it uses the first optional argument as a
plotname.
There are two additional optional arguments that you can give to replot, but not to the original plotting
function. They are none, to suppress a label and lin, to suppress a transformation. See Sections 1.4.4
and 1.3.2.
Examples Figure 1.29, page 50, shows a sample curve in rectangular coordinates.
(c1) plot(t*cos(3.*t),t,0,19/6*%pi), plotnum:250$

5.0000

-5.0000

0.0000 2.5000 5.0000 7.5000 10.0000

0.0000 < X < 9.948; -9.428 < Y < 8.384 X

Figure 1.29: Plot of a function in rectangular coordinates

1.6. SCREEN DISPLAY, FILES AND HARDCOPY 51

Now replot the Figure 1.29, page 50, in polar coordinates (see Section [Link], page 25) and with equalscale
: true;. The resulting plot is Figure 1.30, page 51.
(c2) replot(true,polar), equalscale:true$

5.0000

-5.0000

-4.787 < X < 9.428 -5.0000 0.0000 5.0000

-6.504 < Y < 7.318
Z = 0.0000 X

Figure 1.30: Replot of the previous plot using polar coordinates

Note: In certain circumstances, the Macsyma Front End computes a three-dimensional coordinate trans-
formation, and replots its projection in the original coordinate plane, if it is two dimensional.
plot now default: true Option Variable
If a plotting command is given, Macsyma computes the plot data (and, in versions with file-based
graphics, stores it in a file). If plot now is true, then Macsyma draws the image in a plot window
immediately. If false, Macsyma creates the plot file, but does not display the plot. The plot can be
displayed using replot (or redraw plot file in versions with file-based graphics).
dont Keyword
Keyword for: plot, graph, paramplot, contourplot, replot
If dont appears as an optional argument to the plotting functions, then the points are calculated, but
not plotted. This is primarily of use for creating plots that are to be named and used later. dont
is a local option variable, like first and last, and so it is not saved when the plot is named. Thus
plot(exp(x),x,-1,1,dont); replot(); plots something. Setting plot now to false has the same
effect for all the plotting commands.

1.6.2 Hardcopying Plots

To make a hardcopy of a plot, select the graphics section you wish to plot and

Create a new empty notebook.

52 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

Select the notebook section containing the plot you wish to print. Click on the menu command Edit |
Copy Section.

Select the new empty notebook. Click on the menu command Edit | Paste Section.

Click on the menu command File | Print and provide the information requested to print the plot.

You may also wish to review Options for Printing Attributes or Options for Graphical Attributes.

1.6.3 Saving Plots in Files

You can save any graphic produced by Macsyma in a Macsyma notebook ﬁle with this procedure.

Create a new empty notebook.

Select the notebook section containing the plot you wish to save in a ﬁle. Click on the menu command
Edit | Copy Section.
Select the new empty notebook. Click on the menu command Edit | Paste Section.

Save the new notebook in a file by clicking on the menu command File | Save As, and assigning the file
a name with the filename extension .mfe.

You can read this ﬁle back into Macsyma by clicking on the menu command File | Open and selecting the
appropriate ﬁle. You can then cut or copy and paste this graphic into any other Macsyma notebook or into
any other Windows document.

Note: In order to copy any section of a Macsyma notebook as a Windows metafile, it is necessary to turn
on the switch Clipboard Force Metafile. This is accomplished by clicking on File | Option Defaults,
selecting the category called Notebook, selecting the notebook attribute Clipboard Force Metafile, then
turning it on. (If this attribute is not turned on, then Macsyma only copies sections of Macsyma notebooks
to other notebooks, and does not create metafiles. Copying sections of Macsyma notebooks is faster if no
metafile is created.)

Note: This area of Macsyma is subject to change. Please consult release notes for your version of Macsyma
for latest information.
The Graphics | Export Dialog enables you to save graphics in four other ﬁle formats.

• .BMP ﬁles
• .GIF ﬁles

• .PCX ﬁles
• .RLE ﬁles.
1.7. OTHER TOPICS IN GRAPHICS 53

1.7 Other Topics in Graphics

1.7.1 Cleaning Up the Plotting Environment
plotreset() Function
Resets the option variables aﬀecting plotting back to their default values. The option variables relating
to terminal control are not reset.
plot options default: perspective, ticksize, ticknum, underside, System Variable
plotnum1, plotnumprec, reverse, equalscale,
noprint, plotnum, xaxis, yaxis, contours, xfun,
yfun, crosshatch, labelcontours, dateplot,
ploterror, plotgap, hardcopy, plotnum0, xmin,
xmax, ymin, ymax, zmin, zmax, window, viewpt,
centerplot, clear, wait
This system variable provides a list of the plotting option variables which are re-initialized by the
plotreset command. The command ev(plot options); will print out a list containing the values of
the option variable.

1.7.2 Handling Plot Errors

ploterror default: true Option Variable
Governs what happens when plot and most other plotting functions encounter an error in trying to
evaluate a function or expression at a plot point.

• If ploterror is true, the default, then an error occurs.

• If ploterror is a ﬂoating-point number, then that number is used as the value of the erroneous
form.
• If ploterror is false, then the value of the erroneous form is set to the value of the option variable
plotundeﬁned. This causes the point to be skipped in the plotting.

1.7.3 Alternate Representations of 3D Plots

Internally, the plots generated by plot3d (with or without the not3d option variable), graph3d, and
contourplot are the same, and it is possible to choose between any of the four representations. Table 1.7
lists the four representations that are directly accessible.

Representation Command Keyword (if any)

hidden-line plot3d
graph3d hide
3D, hidden lines not removed graph3d
plot3d \3d
contourplot contourplot
plot3d contour
not3d plot3d not3d

Table 1.7: Access to Plot Representations

54 CHAPTER 1. PLOTTING AND GRAPHICS

Note: The keyword 3D will also be accepted in all of the following forms: \3d, “3d” or “3D”.
The representation can be changed after the plot has been made by using the function replot. The following
table shows how to specify diﬀerent representations.

Representation Command
hidden-Line replot(true, hide);
3D replot(true, \3d);
contourplot replot(true, contour);
not3d replot(true, not3d);

Table 1.8: Controlling Representations From replot

Note: There is an interaction between contourplot and not3d, such that when swapping from a not3d
representation to a contourplot, it is necessary to supply an additional optional argument lin. Thus,
for example, replot(true, contour, lin);. The true in the call to replot indicates the last plot. See
Section 1.6.1, page 50.

1.7.4 Miscellaneous Plotting Commands

plotmode Option Variable
An option variable which specifies the format of the plot output. The default and other possible values
depend on the machine and (for hardcopy) the output device.
See the Release Notes for your Macsyma for the possible values for your version of Macsyma.
plotbell default: true Option Variable
If this option is true, the bell on your terminal rings when a plot is finished. To disable the bell, set
plotbell to false.
The bell rings if wait is true and if you’re plotting on the terminal. See Section [Link], page 31. The
plotting function is now waiting for you to type something before it exits and prints the next C-label
on your plot.
This option variable does have any effect in a notebook in Macsyma 2.0 and its successors.
See the Release Notes for your Macsyma for any new information.
Chapter 2

The Macsyma Front End Math

Engine

MFE itself has the ability to calculate, store, graph and view data associated with a notebook. The MFE
math engine is the part of MFE that manages and computes with this data. It is separate and distinct
from both the PDEase and Macsyma math engines. Each notebook has its own set of data and names for
referencing the data. PDEase uses MFE variables to capture and graph its output. Macsyma can access
MFE variables and, amongst other features, can use the MFE math engine to access external numerical
libraries.

2.1 Entering Data into the MFE Math Engine

The basic commands to transfer data from the Macsyma math engine to the MFE math engine and MFE
variables are:
mfe put(mac var, mfe var) Function
Places data from Macsyma into an MFE array.

mac var Result

scalar Assigns scalar value to mfe var
list Creates 1D MFE array
matrix Creates 2D MFE array
array Creates corresponding MFE array
string Creates 1D MFE array of characters

Macsyma variables must be integers, ﬂoating point numbers, or Macsyma strings. They cannot be
bigﬂoats, big integers, complex numbers, rational numbers, block matrices, or any other Macsyma
object that does not evaluate to a number or string.
mfe get(mfe var {, mac name}) Function
Places data from the MFE mfe var into the Macsyma environment. The optional argument mac name
can be supplied only when getting an MFE array.

55
56 CHAPTER 2. THE MACSYMA FRONT END MATH ENGINE

mfe var mac name Result

MFE scalar (ignored) returns a scalar
1D MFE array not given returns a list filled with values from MFE
2D MFE array not given returns a matrix filled with values from MFE
2D MFE array not given returns nested list structure
MFE array given fills array macs name with data from
and returns the array name mac name
mfe eval(command string {, value flag, mac name}) Function
Evaluates command string in MFE. If value flag = true, then the result of the evaluated MFE com-
mand is returned as in mfe get. If value flag = false, then no result of the MFE command is returned
to Macsyma, and mfe eval returns ’Done.
view mfe data(mfe name0 {,mfe name1, . . . }) Function
The MFE object with name mfe name0 appears in a DataViewer section in the current notebook.
mfe namei can refer to either a 1D or 2D array in the MFE environment. view mfe data attempts
to provide the most suitable display of the data, depending on the dimensions of the MFE arrays.
By default, the DataViewer uses double precision for floating point numbers in MFE math variables.
If the mfe namei is single precision, the DataViwer uses e-format to display it. You can enter single
precision values using e-format. The MFE math engine will convert the type of the number as needed.
The DataViewer displays MFE variables or math expressions. You must first move Macsyma Math
Engine data into an MFE variable before you can view it. Similarly, you must import data from a file
into an MFE variable to view it.
If you try to create an DataViewer section, you may be prompted for the name of an MFE vari-
able to view. You can create an empty DataViewer section by Edit | Insert Section and selecting
DataViewer.
If no MFE variables exist, you must create one first. You can create an MFE variable in at least three
ways:

• You can create an MFE variable from a Macsyma Math Engine variable by using the mfe put com-
mand. See also mfe put, page 55.
• You can create a new MFE variable by importing data from a ﬁle. Use Data | Import to select the
ﬁle, and choose the name of the MFE variable. See also page 57.

• You can create a new MFE variable by assigning the data from an existing graphics section. Use
Graphics | Assign Data to Variable.

plot mfe data(mfe name0 {,mfe name1, . . . }) Function

The MFE object with name mfe name0 appears in a graph in the current notebook. mfe namei can
refer to either a 1D or 2D array in the MFE environment. plot mfe data plots all the MFE arrays
in one plot, regardless of the dimensions of the MFE arrays.
mfe update now() Function
Causes MFE to update its math objects before the Macsyma computation continues, after the call to
mfe update now in a Macsyma program.
mfe kill(mfe name) Function
Removes the MFE object named mfe name from the MFE environment.
2.2. THE MFE DATA PACKAGE 57

2.1.1 Import and Export – external data ﬁles

You can export an MFE variable to a file by selecting the Menu item Edit — Export. You can choose
CSV format, or fixed field.
Similarly, you can import an external data field in CSV or fixed field format by selecting the Menu item
Edit — Import. You can choose CSV format, or fixed field.

2.2 The mfe data Package

These commands are preliminary and are subject to change without notice. Refer to the on-line documen-
tation.
See usage(mfe data);.
Do demo(mfe data); for several examples.

2.2.1 Getting Data From the MFE Math Engine

get data line(objname, r or c, numb) Function
Returns a Macsyma list whose values are taken from column (or row) number numb from the Macsyma
matrix, Macsyma array, or MFE array named objname. r or c must be either ’row or ’col.
get data line as matrix(objname, r or c, numb) Function
Returns a Macsyma matrix whose values are taken from column (or row) number numb from the
Macsyma matrix, Macsyma array or MFE array named objname. r or c must be either ’row or ’col.
This returns a column or row vector.
get data as matrix(objname) Function
Returns a Macsyma matrix whose values are taken from the Macsyma matrix or Macsyma array or
MFE array named objname.
get data as array(objname,arrname) Function
Fills the Macsyma array named arrname with the contents of the Macsyma matrix or Macsyma array
or MFE array named objname. Returns the name arrname.
zero based arrays default: false Option Variable
For commands in the mfe data package, zero based arrays determines whether (Macsyma and MFE)
arrays are referenced with zero-based indexing or 1-based indexing.

zero based arrays Index for ﬁrst row/col of array

false 1
true 0

Matrices are always 1-based.

2.2.2 Putting Data into the MFE Math Engine from Macsyma
new data object(mfe name {,numtype, dim1, dim2}) Function
Creates a new MFE object of type args =[type,num1,num2] and displays it in a DataViewer. If no
number type or size is given, the default is a double ﬂoat 10 x 10 array.
58 CHAPTER 2. THE MACSYMA FRONT END MATH ENGINE

put data cell(data, objname, rownum {,colnum}) Function

Changes the value of one cell in a 1D or 2D Macsyma matrix or Macsyma array or MFE array.
put data 1d(dataobj, mfe name, r or c, index num) Function
Puts 1D data into a 1D or 2D MFE array with name mfe name. mfe name must be the name of an
existing MFE array. The value of r or c must be either ’row or ’col, and its value determines the
acceptable forms of the 1D data object dataobj .

Value of r or c Acceptable forms of dataobj

row Macsyma list or row vector
col Macsyma list or matrix

put data 1d returns the value ’done.

2.2.3 Viewing Data

Chapter 1 describes how to produce plots from Macsyma variables. This section describes how to produce
two- and three-dimensional plots from MFE variables. Please refer to Chapter 1 for more detailed information
about plot options.

[Link] Making 2 and 3 Dimensional Plots of MFE Data

graph2d data(objname, r or c, col1 {, col2}) Function

Graphs column (or row) col1 of data object objname on the horizontal axis and columns (or rows)
col2 ,... of objname on the vertical axis. objname must be a Macsyma matrix, a Macsyma array or
an MFE array. r or c, which must be either ’row or ’col, determines whether rows or columns are
extracted from objname.
If objname is a 1-dimensional matrix, Macsyma array or MFE array, then the values are plotted as a
function of the integer array index.
See plot mfe data, Section 2.1, page 56.
graph3d data(mfe name, r or c, col1, col2, col3 {, plotcode}) Function
Makes a scatter plot of the columns (or rows) col1 , col2 , col3 of the MFE array mfe name. r or c
must be either ’row or ’col, and determines whether rows or columns are extracted from mfe name. The
optional argument plotcode is a list of integers which controls the line type and plot point symbol, as
for other Macsyma plotting commands. If plotcode is not speciﬁed, graph3d data produces a scatter
plot with no lines connecting the plot points.
plot3d data(objname {, whereplot, mfe name}) Function
Plots the values in the Macsyma matrix, Macsyma 2D array or 2D MFE array objname against the
integer indices on the two horizontal axes. If the optional argument whereplot has the value ’macs, then
the plot is generated in Macsyma. If whereplot has the value ’mfe, then mfe name must be speciﬁed,
the plot is generated in MFE, and the values in objname are stored in the MFE array mfe name.
contourplot data(objname) Function
Draws a contour plot of the matrix, Macsyma array, or MFE array objname in a Macsyma graphics
section.
2.2. THE MFE DATA PACKAGE 59

[Link] Smoothing and Graphing MFE Data

graph smoothed data(objname, r or c, col1, col2 {,type}) Function

Fits the data in column (or row) col2 of the matrix, Macsyma array, or MFE array objname to the
abscissas in column (row) col1 with a cubic spline (default), rational function or polynomial. r or c,
which must have one of the values ’row and ’col, determines whether rows or columns of objname are
graphed. If the value of the optional argument type is speciﬁed, it must have one of the values ’poly,
’rat, ’spline. The value of type determines the type of smoothing performed.
Index

\3d, 53 contours (option variable), 7

xmax1 (system variable), 40 coordinates
xmin1 (system variable), 41 polar, 25
ymax1 (system variable), 40 curv tol (option variable), 13
ymin1 (system variable), 41
zmax1 (system variable), 41 dataline, 47
zmin1 (system variable), 42 dateplot (option variable), 47
3D, 53 dont (keyword), 51
3D Graphics, 17 dt factor (option variable), 13
dt rate (option variable), 13
adaparamplot2 (function), 13 dt ratio (option variable), 13
adaplot (package), 12
adaplot2 (function), 12 equalscale (option variable), 34

centerplot (option variable), 35 ﬁrst (keyword), 32

char graph (function), 14
char multigraph (function), 15 get data as array (function), 57
char paramplot (function), 14 get data as matrix (function), 57
char plot (function), 14 get data line (function), 57
character plotting, 13 get data line as matrix (function), 57
clear (option variable), 31 graph
color black (option variable), 40 linear scaling, 25
color blue (option variable), 39 logarithmic scaling, 25
color blue green (option variable), 39 graph (special form), 9
color cyan (option variable), 39 graph2 (special form), 16
color dark blue (option variable), 39 graph2d data (function), 58
color dark green (option variable), 39 graph3d (special form), 21
color dark red (option variable), 39 graph3d data (function), 58
color function (option variable), 38 graph smoothed data (function), 59
color gray (option variable), 39
hardcopy of plots, 51
color green (option variable), 39
hide, 53
color magenta (option variable), 39
color olive (option variable), 39 implicit plot (function), 8
color orange (option variable), 39 initperspec (function), 30
color purple (option variable), 39
color red (option variable), 39 keywords for
color white (option variable), 39 plot, graph, paramplot, contourplot, replot,
color yellow (option variable), 39 32, 51
color yellow green (option variable), 39 plot, graph, paramplot, contourplot, replot,
combine plots (function), 31 plot3d, 32
complex plot3d (function), 20 plot3d, 18
contour, 53
contourplot (special form), 6 label (special form), 45
contourplot3d (function), 20 labelcontours (option variable), 47
contourplot data (function), 58 last (keyword), 32

60
INDEX 61

linlog, 25 plotnum animate (option variable), 48

loglin, 25 plotnumprec (option variable), 44
loglog, 25 plotreset (function), 53
plotsurf (function), 21
Macsyma break, 7, 28 polar, 25
merge plot ﬁles (special form), 33 polar coordinates, 25
mfe eval (function), 56 put data 1d (function), 58
mfe get (function), 55 put data cell (function), 58
mfe kill (function), 56
mfe put (function), 55 replot (special form), 50
mfe update now (function), 56
same (keyword), 32
new data object (function), 57 saving plots in ﬁles, 52
noprint (option variable), 47 screen display, 50
not3d, 53 screen redisplay, 50
not3d (keyword), 18
tessellations, 22
paramplot (special form), 5 ticknum (option variable), 45
paramplot3d (function), 20 title (option variable), 45
perspective (option variable), 36
plot (special form), 2 view mfe data (function), 56
plot redisplay, 50 viewpt (option variable), 35
plot2 (special form), 15
plot2 vect (function), 11 wait (option variable), 31
plot3d (special form), 18
xfun, 29
plot3d data (function), 58
xlabel (option variable), 44
plot3d vect (function), 23
xmax (option variable), 40
plot animate (special form), 48
xmin (option variable), 41
plot data (special form), 18
plot mfe data (function), 56 yfun, 29
plot now (option variable), 51 ylabel (option variable), 44
plot options (system variable), 53 ymax (option variable), 41
plot roll (option variable), 35 ymin (option variable), 41
plot size (option variable), 34
plot style (option variable), 47 zero based arrays (option variable), 57
plot tessellation (option variable), 22 zmax (option variable), 41, 42
plot vect head (option variable), 11 zmin (option variable), 42
plot vect head angle (option variable), 12 zmax1 (system variable), 42
plot vect head size (option variable), 12 zmin1 (system variable), 42
plot vect scale (option variable), 11
plotbell (option variable), 54
plotbounds (option variable), 47
ploterror (option variable), 53
plotheight (option variable), 15
plotmode (option variable), 54
plotnum, 18
plotnum (option variable), 24
plotnum0
use in plot2 vect, 11
plotnum0 (option variable), 25
plotnum1, 18
use in plot2 vect, 11
plotnum1 (option variable), 25
plotnum2 (option variable), 25

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