Most of the documentation for the graphics systems on the IBM machines were initially as lineprinter output until the period 1980 onwards when a Graphics User Manual was printed in a loose-leaf form available for continuous update. This is a snapshot of some of its contents around 1984. The main editors were Chris Osland and Dave Greenaway. Not all the information has been reproduced but a subset that gives a flavour of the graphics support in this period.
The aim of this manual is to provide any user of the RAL Central Computer System with complete details of the graphics software available. The manual therefore covers the routines available in the graphics packages and the control language required to use the packages and devices on the system. The only system not covered in detail is GINO-F, which is covered adequately by its own documentation: a brief description of the RAL implementations is given in chapter G1.
The manual consists of eight main Parts, with the alphabetic index to the whole manual at the back. The parts are:
Each chapter within a Part is concerned with a particular topic, for instance chapter B3 deals with line drawing in SMOG and chapter D4 with contouring. With this arrangement it is hoped that users will be able to decide easily which graphics facilities to use and how to use them. When a problem arises and details of particular routines are required, the user should use the alphabetic index in chapter H1: this has an entry for each routine; it gives the calling sequence and a reference to the subsection in parts B, C or D that describes the routine in detail.
All information specific to particular implementations has been removed (as far as possible) from Parts B, C, D and E. Instead it is found in separate chapters of Part F, each chapter dealing with the implementation on a particular computer or operating system: chapter F1 deals with the RAL Coupled IBM OS/MVT system and chapter F2 with the RAL IBM VM/CMS system. Each of these implementation chapters starts with a single page summary of methods of running graphics on that system, which should often be sufficient for the regular user of that system.
Although every attempt has been made to ensure that the information in this manual is both accurate and useful, errors and omissions will undoubtedly have crept in and the author would welcome all suggestions for improvements and corrections. It will be appreciated that in many cases examples are the best form of teaching. As there are so many routines (and options on each routine) described in this manual, it is impractical to attempt to provide comprehensive examples.
Finally a word of encouragement for new users. I have attempted to ensure that new users with a single, simple requirement (for instance to draw a graph) need only read a minute fraction of this manual before they can obtain the output they require. For this reason most of the examples of this sort of routine are self contained, and you should only need to refer to the section in part B on say 'graph drawing', and the single page summary in part C on how to use graphics on a particular system.
A manual of this size requires many iterations to become accurate and usable: please send comments on the manual to the author who will try to make changes to improve the manual with each release.
