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# Cook-book

In this section we will be giving several examples of typical usage of GMT programs. In general, we will start with a raw data set, manipulate the numbers in various ways, then display the results in diagram or map view. The resulting plots will have in common that they are all made up of simpler plots that have been overlaid to create a complex illustration. We will mostly follow the following format:

1.
  We explain what we want to achieve in plain language.

2.
  We present a cshell script that contains all commands used to generate the illustration.

3.
  We explain the rationale behind the commands.

4.
  We present the illustration, 50% reduced in size, and without the timestamp (-U).

A detailed discussion of each command is not given; we refer you to the manual pages for command line syntax, etc. We encourage you to run these scripts for yourself. See Appendix D if you would like an electronic version of all the shell-scripts (both csh and bash scripts are available; only the csh -scripts are discussed here) and support data used below. Note that all examples explicitly specifies the measurement units, so although we use inches you should be able to run these scripts and get the same plots even if you have cm as the default measure unit. The examples are all written to be ``quiet'', that is no information is echoed to the screen. Thus, these scripts are well suited for background execution. Note that we also end each script by cleaning up after ourselves. Because awk is broken as designed on some systems, and nawk is not available on others we refer to $AWK in the scripts below; the do_examples scripts will set this when running all examples.

- The making of contour maps
- Image presentations
- Spectral estimation and xy-plots
- A 3-D perspective mesh plot
- A 3-D illuminated surface in black and white
- Plotting of histograms
- A simple location map
- A 3-D histogram
- Plotting time-series along tracks
- A geographical bar graph plot
- Making a 3-D RGB color cube
- Optimal triangulation of data
- Plotting of vector fields
- Gridding of data and trend surfaces
- Gridding, contouring, and masking of unconstrained areas
- Gridding of data, continued
- Images clipped by coastlines
- Volumes and Spatial Selections
- Color patterns on maps
- Custom map symbols

Next: The making of contour Up: The Generic Mapping Tools Previous: Van der Grinten Projection