Such a set of PostScript files could then form the basis for the next step. As PostScript is an unhandy way of distributing large amounts of data, we use the QuickView package provided as part of the Archimede Project of CNES, Toulouse, France.
QuickView itself is freeware that can be obtained from CNES via ftp. Contact
Alain Caranana at CNES (caranana@sc2000.cst.cnes.fr) for
details. QuickView is a dedicated graphical viewing package that is used to
``page'' through a large amount of pre-defined graphs in GIF format. It uses a
data base like Graphical Data Distribution Standard (GDDS) which keeps each
plot in a range of resolutions, allowing some zooming capabilities, and allows
the user to group and search his data by user-defined tags. QuickView is meant
to replace cupboards full of summary plots by electronic means, typically a
set of GIFs on CDROM. It is the tool that has been selected for the Interball
mission and would also have been used by the French CLUSTER community
(CIS).
CNES also provides a set of tools which make handling SDDG very easy. SDDG_tools allows one to create SDDG data structures from a directory full of PostScript files, using freeware products such as ghostview. Further tools allow one to add and merge SDDG structures.
These can subsequently be viewed using QuickView, for which the package needs to be installed locally. However, if one does not want to do that, there is a further tool called SDDG_Web, which translates the SDDG structure to html, preserving most of the QucikView functionality. This makes the data instantly available to a large community via WWW.
The whole process can easily be automated into chain production, and it is hoped that SDDG and QUICKView will evolve into a widely used standard. As this package takes PostScript as input, you do not even need to use PaPCo as the front end, any plotting package which can produce a set of PostScript files can be used.