The Chandra Plotting Package

The CIAO 4 release includes a new, more powerful version of ChIPS, the CIAO plotting package. It can be used during data analysis - e.g. to plot a lightcurve - and to create publication-quality figures. A range of examples are included in the ChIPS Gallery.

ChIPS is designed for use in a variety of modes: as a user-interactive application and in batch mode. ChIPS is an importable module for scripting languages (Python or S-Lang) and is available as a C/C++ library for software developers. Refer to the Should I Use ChIPS in Python or S-Lang? page for help in deciding which language to use.

There are several key concepts that define how ChIPS works, which are described in the Concept pages.

In interactive mode, undo and redo commands allow the user to easily step forward and backward through previous commands. Users have fine control over the figure display: setting colors, changing font styles, repositioning objects. The many object attributes can be changed at any time during the session, and the change is immediately visible in the ChIPS window. The default values may also be changed and saved as a preferences files, which can be used in any ChIPS session.

The ChIPS session can be saved into a platform-independent state file. The session can then be restored at any time.