Re: An IDL cron job, true color plots, Xvfb, Z-buffer, and all sorts

Howdy,

Thanks for all of the suggestions.  I confess to being absolutely
stupid when it comes to IDL colors and plotting - and I have actually
read a fair amount of what's out there.  I know I must be really
idiotic about this subject, because I always have a hell of a time
reproducing the expected output from the tricks I see online.

For example, if I use the modified version of my stupid plotting
procedure that was in David's reply (running interactively, using X
windows), I have a couple of additional problems.  First, I downloaded
FSC_COLOR so that I could use the annotatecolor option to colorbar.
However, the call as it stands in colorbar (which I also just re-
downloaded, to make sure I had the current version) leaves me with a
syntax error in FSC_COLOR, supposedly to do with the filename argument
in the call:
theColor = PickColorName(Filename=filename, _Extra=extra,
Cancel=cancelled)

Furthermore, if I try to use the Z buffer and TVREAD to solve my
problem, for example:
set_plot, 'Z'
plot_test, [0,2],[0.3,2.5]
tvread(/png, filename='plot_test',/nodialog)

My plot comes out with a blue background, invisible axes, and red
annotation on the colorbar.  So clearly I'm still missing something
with respect to specifying the colors.  I like the idea of using the Z
buffer and TVREAD much better than the postcript option, but I think
this problem was what actually made me abandon it the first time I
tried.  To be sure I wasn't screwing something up with calls in my
startup file, I commented out all graphics-related things prior to
testing the above snippet.

I realize the answers to these questions are probably out there
someplace... but trust me, if you had the internet connectivity I
currently do (at a remote research station), extensive browsing would
drive you even more batty than running in circles with IDL's colors...

Thanks to everyone on this newsgroup for always being so generous with
suggestions,

Kathryn