Paper maps provide portable, static views of GIS analyses, and they can make nice wallpaper. As a GIS practitioner, you will need to generate hardcopy maps to include in (and add razzle-dazzle to) your technical reports. Frequently, the people controlling your research funding see GIS as computer-aided cartography; being ignorant of its other capabilities, they expect hardcopy maps.
qpr -q tnsps imagefile
Postscript is a set of proprietary graphics formats licensed by Adobe Systems. The Colorscript printer handles Adobe 1 and most Adobe 2 formats. If necessary, you can use the psfix utility to convert later Adobe 2 formats to earlier formats. Output from the Colorscript printer costs 50 cents per page, payable when you pick it up at Smith. If you request it, CNS will print your Colorscript output as overhead transparencies for an additional charge. Print files to the Colorscript printer with the command
printcolor imagefile(the preferred way, with a burst page identifying you), or
qpr -q smicolps imagefile
qpr -q smicoljet imagefile
You should be aware that Postscript is a very inefficient format for raster images: the files get very big. You can avoid cluttering up your disk space with Postscript-format image files: save your images in more compact formats such as .GIF or Sun Raster, and pipe these through a Postscript conversion filter or use XView (see bwlow) to print them on a Postscript device.
The Sun Open Windows snapshot utility lets you capture your screen, a window, or any portion of your screen outlined with the mouse, as a Sun raster file. It is easiest to learn simply by experimenting with it. The time-delay option lets you move the mouse cursor out of the snapshot area before the snapshot is taken.
xview by John Bradley (U. Pennsylvania) lets you edit files in Sun raster and most other bitmap formats. It supports file format conversions; color editing; various filters for dithering, edge-enhancement, etc; The newest version also supports rudimentary text annotations. It reads Postscript files through a ghostscript filter. It lets you print files in other formats as Postscript output, controlling page size and image placement on the page. (Note: I am told the smicoljet printer will print larger-scale output from xview without manual resetting at the console, but I haven't yet verified this myself.) Very useful package.
The portable bitmap (PBM) tools by Jef Poskanzer translate graphics files through various intermediate "portable" formats, and support various file manipulations. (Note that XView can perform many of these functions as well, and also lets you see what's happening.) The intermediate formats include portable bitmap (PBM), portable graymap (PGM), portable anymap (PNM) and portable pixmap (PPM).
A partial list of conversion tools is:
Format to PBM from PBM ASCII graphic -- pbmtoascii Epson printer graphics -- ppmtoepson FITS fitstopgm pgmtofits GEM .img gemtopbm pbmtogem Compuserve GIF giftoppm ppmtogif HP Laserjet -- pbmtolj HP Paintjet pjtoppm ppmtopj MacPaint mactopbm pbmtomac Mac PICT picttopbm pbmtopict PCX pcxtoppm ppmtopcx Postscript "image" data psidtopgm -- Postscript -- pnmtops Sun raster rasttopnm pnmtorast Targa tgatoppm ppmtotga TIFF tifftopnm pnmtotiff X11 bitmap xbmtopbm pbmtoxbm X11 pixmap xpmtoppm ppmtoxpm X11 window dump xwdtopnm pnmtoxwd greymap--bitmap -- pgmtopbm pixmap--greymap ppmtopgm pgmtoppm RGB greymap color separates rgb3toppm ppmtorgb3PBM manipulation tools include:
pbmreduce reduces the size of a portable bitmap by factor N pbmtext creates bitmap of text pgmedge edge-detection for greymap pgmenhance edge-enhancement of greymap pgmhist prints histogram of graymap values pgmnorm greymap constrast stretch, saturating 2% black, 1% white pnmarith adds, subtracts or multiplies 2 congruent anymaps pnmcat concatenates anymaps left-to-right or top-to-bottom pnmcrop crops an anymap (eliminates single-color edge) pnmcut cuts a rectangle out of an anymap pnmdepth rescales color ranges in an anymap pnmenlarge enlarges an anymap by factor N pnmflip flips, rotates or transposes an anymap pnmgamma does gamma correction (adjusts brightness) on an anymap pnminvert black-white inverts an anymap pnmmargin adds a single-color border to an anymap pnmpaste pastes one anymap into another anymap pnmrotate rotates an anymap to any angle (-90 to 90 degrees) pnmscale rescales x and y dimensions of an anymap pnmsmooth replaces each pixel with 9-cell neighborhood average ppmdither reduces pixmap RGB's to specified ranges by dithering ppmmake creates a pixmap of specified color and sizeTo convert a color map to black and white and print it on the Townsend printer, save a Sunraster-format snapshot of it as file.rs, then:
rasttopnm file.rs | ppmtopgm | pnmtops | qpr -q tnsps
This sequence converts the Sunraster color file to a portable pixmap, converts that to a portable graymap, converts that to Postscript (resizing to fit a standard page if necessary), and pipes that format to the Townsend printer. (Note that PNM, PPM and PGM formats are treated as equivalents.)
To print a color map to the Colorscript printer:
rasttopnm file.rs | pnmtops | printcolor
(Make sure your image is small enough to fit inside smicolps's margins.)
GRASS on a Microcomputer under Exceed
Some of the microcomputers in the Townsend microcomputer lab annex (behind the X-terminal room) are networked and equipped with Hummingbird's Exceed network X-emulation software, which runs under Microsoft Windows. You can run GRASS through an Exceed session, and Exceed lets you save any GRASS monitor display to the Windows Clipboard (so you can bring it directly into a WordPerfect document, for example), to a local file, or directly to a printer. Be aware that Exceed may lose parts of an image in your GRASS monitor if you drop other windows over it; simply redisplay them as necessary.
The microcomputers in the annex are networked to the HP4M laser printer in that room. You can print to that printer, or you can ftp saved color images to Strauss, and print them on the Colorscript printer.