Chapter 8: Putting The Commands To Work; What You'll Learn In This Chapter - HP 7470A Interfacing And Programming Manual

Chapter O
Putting the Commands
to Work
What You'll Learn in This Chapter
In this chapter you'll learn how to put commands together to develop a
plot. Previous programs have been purposely kept to a less-advanced
level in order to clearly demonstrate the command usage. The following
example is designed to show you how to integrate m a n y commands
into a complete program, how data might be handled, and how sub­
routines might be used to program a task which would be common to
many plots and used in several programs.
This program draws a line graph, one of the most common types of
plots. While this line graph shows sales data, line graphs can be used
to plot almost any kind of data — factory output, sales volume, data
from laboratory experiments, population trends, etc. The concepts of
plotting and labeling demonstrated here are applicable in almost any
application.
A variety of allowable separators and terminators have been used in
this program listing. In applications where it is important to minimize
the number of characters sent over the interface, the spaces between
commands and the semicolon preceding the next mnemonic could and
should be omitted. In applications where compatibility with other HP
plotters is important, a semicolon or a line feed should always be used
as the terminator and parameters should be separated by commas.
With RS-232-C plotters, use a semicolon; line feeds are not recognized
as terminators.
PUTTING THE COMMANDS TO WORK 8-1