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Statistics 200: Lab 11 (Friday 9 April 1998)

Today's tasks:
Setting up your own libraries, and dynamic graphics.

Libraries in Splus

When doing practical projects in Splus your working directory can get full of many different objects and it can be difficult to keep organized. One useful way of remaining organized is to set up a library (or libraries) to store the important data and tools for the project. Creating your own library is not a difficult task and it is definitely worthwhile when completing a large project. Well here's how you do it.
 
  • Decide where you want to create the library (for this class use the A: drive or the C:\user directory).
  • Decide on a name for your library (in Windows3.1 this name must be shorter than 8 characters).
  • Your library may have sections to store different types of objects, decide on a section name and create a directory with this name (the same constraints on the name apply).
  • Within each section create a directory called _Data and within this directory create a directory called _Help.
  • Run Splus with the working directory now being the library and section _Data directory, (BM or JH will demonstrate this). For example, if you have your library setup with the _Data directory being A:\libraryname\sectionname\_Data, then you need Splus to run with this as your working directory.
  • Use Splus, as you always do, to create your objects.
  • If you want to create a help file for any object type prompt(objectname), this will create a template for your help file and you will need to edit this later in a text editor (notepad for example). You may need to copy these textiles into your _Data/_Help directory. Creating help files can be useful if other people are going to use your library. Help files can even help yourself when you return to use the objects after a long time.
  • In your section directory create a file called README.TXT that describes the library. In our example the file would be in the A:\libraryname\sectionname directory.
  • In your library directory create a file called README.TXT that describes the library and all the sections of the library. In our example the file would be in the directory A:\libraryname.

    • If you need any inspiration, use filemanager to study the structure of the Stat200 class library that is located in H:\classes\stat200.

    Dynamic graphics

    I will demonstrate a graphical program that gives a cartoon of a boat sailing across the screen. You may notice that the sea level is going up and down and the well designed boat just sails across the screen, going up and down on the waves.

    Think of a cartoon that you want to draw. The more complicated the better (well we're not expecting a new episode of the Simpsons).

    You will need to setup a graphics window. You will probably need to mess with par. The best advise we can give is check out the commands polygon, and symbol. You may want to use other commands of your own choice. Ask for help if there's something that you can't seem to do. So good luck with expressing your artistic talents in a whole new medium.