surf-geometry - Man Page

visualization of algebraic curves and surfaces

Synopsis

surf -n|--no-gui file ...
surf [Gtk options] [-x|--exec] [--progress-dialog] [--auto-resize] file ...
surf --help

Description

surf is a tool to render algebraic curves and surfaces. It is script driven and has (optionally) a nifty graphical user interface using the Gtk widget set.

The only input needed is the equation of an algebraic curve/surface in everyday mathematical notation. The output is a (series of) color or black and white image(s) in one of several file formats.

surf also provides a C-style command language which helps working out more complicated equations.

The resolution of an image is only bounded by the available memory. Since the image is stored as an array of floats and because some image processing algorithms need a copy of the image, you need at least width*height*12 bytes of virtual memory.

surf can handle curves/surfaces up to degree 30. The main features include algebraic curves, algebraic surfaces, hyper plane sections, lines on surfaces, multiple curves/surfaces, adaptive anti aliasing and dithering.

Options

If you run surf with GUI support (i.e. without the -n|--no-gui option) the standard Gtk options are recognized.

-n,  --no-gui

Run without a graphical user interface, just execute the scripts given as files and exit thereafter.

In case surf has been compiled without GUI support this option does nothing and scripts are always executed non-interactively.

-x,  --exec

Execute scripts passed as files immediately. Otherwise the scripts are just loaded, not executed.

--progress-dialog

Pop up a progress dialog instead of the status bar display during calculations.

--auto-reszie

Automatically resize the image windows to the size of the image. Be aware that there's no check whether the image size is bigger than your actual screen size.

--help

Display usage information.

Authors

Stephan Endrass, Hans Huelf, Ruediger Oertel, Kai Schneider, Ralf Schmitt, Johannes Beigel

Info

Mar 31 2000