Chapter 9. A C++ Interface for PLplot

Table of Contents

Motivation for the C++ Interface
Design of the PLplot C++ Interface
Stream/Object Identity
Namespace Management
Abstraction of Data Layout
Callbacks and Shades
Collapsing the API
Specializing the PLplot C++ Interface
Status of the C++ Interface

PLplot has long had C and Fortran bindings, presenting a fairly conventional API to the applications programmer. Recently (1994 onwards) PLplot has been growing interfaces (language bindings) to a variety of other languages. In this chapter we discuss the PLplot C++ support provided in the PLplot distribution. Of course many other approaches are possible, perhaps even in use by PLplot users around the world. The purpose of this chapter then is to explain the rationale and intended usage for the bundled C++ language support.