Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the graphics so slow on Windows?

On MS Windows a freeware graphics library called GrWin is used as the output device for PGPlot. GrWin is still under development, the version included in ANA-ROD is the first official version 1.0.0. We have contacted the author, Tsuguhiro Tamaribuchi, and asked if it is possible to speed up the graphics. This is his reply:

> So far I've not been concerned a lot with efficiency of the Library. I think
> this is a future problem to be solved. There are a few tips to speed up
> plotting, though. Try turning off the status bar from [View]->[Status Bar],
> and to move focus to the console window on which the application is launched.
> These will improve the efficiency to some degree.   Good luck :-)

So, we can have good hope that he can one day improve the speed when he starts working on making his package more efficient.

Why is the graphics plot window always on top on Windows?

This is a feature of the GrWin server, which can however be switched off temporarily or permanently:

temporarily: select "Window" on the graphics plot window, and then uncheck the item "Top Most(T)"
permanently: copy the file "grwnd.ini" from the ANA-ROD development and runtime distribution to the directory where the GrWin server has been installed, and add (or modify) the "ZOrder" parameter
```
ZOrder=2
```
Note: for this to work, the "ShowMode" parameter (if defined) has to have a value between 0 and 10 (included).

Why do I get unresolved external references from the PGPLOT libraries when compiling ANAROD? With other programs PGPLOT works fine.

This can happen if you use a PGPLOT graphics package that was already installed on your computer instead of the one from the ANAROD download pages.

PGPLOT consists of a server, which is a stand-alone executable, and the interface libraries (one for Fortran and one for C) that allow other applications to send commands to the PGPLOT server. The main part of this package is written in Fortran, thus one needs a Fortran compiler. There is a variety of such compilers available. For the PGPLOT server, the choice of the compiler is not very important, as the executable is self-contained.

However, in the interface libraries the compiler will insert references to its own compiler-dependent libraries, which need to be resolved when the libraries are used in an application. If the compiler used to create the PGPLOT package is different from the one used for the ANAROD package, then the linker will try to resolve references to compiler-routines from one compiler while looking in the libraries of a different compiler... which is not likely to succeed, thus the unresolved references.

The PGPLOT interface libraries from the ANAROD download pages have been compiled with the same compiler (GNU gfortran) that is used in the ANAROD package.

Why does the OS command function ":" not work on Windows?

When run in a DOS command prompt window it works, however not with MS-DOS commands such as "DIR" etc, but you can for example type ": notepad". It works when running bash (e.g. after having installed CYGWIN).

When I change the size of my terminal window, why does ANA-ROD not use the new size?

ANA-ROD needs to be made aware of the change of the window size. To do so, use the following operating system command (ideally before you start ANA-ROD):

eval `resize`

(Note that the inverted quotes (`) are part of the command syntax.)

Last updated on 11/Jul/2019