NCL Home > Documentation > HLUs > User Guide

HLU user environment

HLU user environment

Environment variables

Every user of NCAR Graphics will either need to set the environment variable NCARG_ROOT, or the three environment variables NCARG_BIN, NCARG_LIB, and NCARG_INCLUDE. Which is done depends on how NCAR Graphics was installed on your system. To determine how these variables have been set, execute:

     env 
A list of all the environment variables that have been set will be shown. If none of the above variables appear, please contact your system administrator to determine where NCAR Graphics has been installed.

If the NCAR Graphics binaries, libraries, and include files were installed under one root directory, say for example /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/lib, and /usr/local/include, respectively, then you will need to do the following:

     setenv NCARG_ROOT /usr/local

If the binaries, libraries, and include files were NOT installed under one root directory, say for example they are in /usr/local/ncarg/bin, /usr/local/ncarg/lib, and /usr/local/include, then you would need to do the following:

     setenv NCARG_BIN /usr/local/ncarg/bin
     setenv NCARG_LIB /usr/local/ncarg/lib
     setenv NCARG_INCLUDE /usr/local/include

The environment variable NCARG_GKS_OUTPUT may be used to direct the metafile output from the NCAR Graphics GKS package to a file (use just the file name) or to pipe it to a translator (give the name of the translator, preceded by a "|").

The environment variable NCARG_GKS_PSOUTPUT may be used to direct the PostScript output from the NCAR Graphics GKS package to a file (stdout is allowed).

The environment variables GRAPHCAP and FONTCAP may be used to tell the NCGM translators "ctrans", "ictrans" and "idt" what default "graphcap" and "fontcap" to use. See the man pages for ctrans(1NCARG), ictrans(1NCARG), and idt(1NCARG) for more information.

The environment variable DISPLAY is not actually used by the translators; if you are using X Windows, it determines where the translator output is to be displayed.

Resource files

There are two resource files which can be installed at system installation time. They are:

  • $(NCARG_SYSRESFILE)
  • $(NCARG_USRRESFILE)

If these files have been created, you can use the ncargpath command to locate them as in "ncargpath NCARG_SYSRESFILE", or "ncargpath NCARG_USRRESFILE".

Important man files

The most important file under the UNIX man facility is ncargintro. If you issue the command "man ncargintro" it will list for you all of the more important components to be found in the NCAR Graphics package.

See also: