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### 9.1 Parameter Suffixes

This section describes deprecated commands. For recommended plotting commands, see Section 8.

Some of the parameters for the plotting tasks behave a little bit differently to other parameters in STILTS, in order to accommodate related sets of values. If you look at the usage of one of the plotting commands, for instance in Appendix B.14.1, you will see that a number of the parameters have the suffixes "`N`" or "`NS`". These suffixes can be substituted with any convenient string to identify parameters which relate to the same input datasets or subsets. Specifically:

Suffix "`N`":
  Denotes an input dataset. At least the `inN` parameter must be given to identify the source of the data; any other parameters with the same value of the `N` suffix relate to that dataset. A dataset here refers to a particular set of plot data from a table; in most cases each input table corresponds to a different dataset, though two datasets may correspond to different sets of columns from the same table.
Suffix "`NS`":
  Denotes a particular subset of the rows in dataset `N`. At least the `subsetNS` parameter must be given to identify the expression by which the subset is defined; any other parameters with the same value of the `NS` suffix relate to that subset.

Some examples will help to illustrate. The following will generate a Cartesian plot of catalogue position from a single dataset:

       stilts plot2d in=gals.fits xdata=RA ydata=DEC

In this case the `N` suffix is present on each of the parameters `in`, `xdata` and `ydata`, but is equal to the empty string, hence invisible. This is perfectly legal, and convenient when only a single table is in use. If we wish to overplot two datasets however, the dataset suffixes (or one of them at least) have to be made explicit so that different ones can be used, for instance:

       stilts plot2d in1=gals.fits  xdata1=RA      ydata1=DEC
                     in2=stars.fits xdata2=RAJ2000 ydata2=DEJ2000

The suffix values "`1`" and "`2`" are quite arbitrary and can be chosen as convenient, so the following would do exactly the same as the previous example:

       stilts plot2d in_GAL=gals.fits   xdata_GAL=RA       ydata_GAL=DEC
                     in_STAR=stars.fits xdata_STAR=RAJ2000 ydata_STAR=DEJ2000

The other parameters which have the `N` suffix apply only to the matching dataset, so for instance the following:

       stilts plot2d in1=gals.fits  xdata1=RA      ydata1=DEC     txtlabel1=NGC_ID
                     in2=stars.fits xdata2=RAJ2000 ydata2=DEJ2000

would draw text labels adjacent to the points from only the gals.fits file giving the contents of its NGC_ID column.

The `NS` suffix identifies distinct row subsets within the same or different datasets. A subset is defined by supplying a boolean inclusion expression (each row is included only if the expression evaluates true for that row) as the value of a `subsetNS` parameter. If, as in all the examples we have seen so far, no `subsetNS` parameter is supplied for a given dataset, then it is treated as a special case, as if a single subset with a name equal to the empty string (`S=""`) containing all rows has been specified. So our earlier simple example:

       stilts plot2d in=gals.fits xdata=RA ydata=DEC

is equivalent to

       stilts plot2d in=gals.fits xdata=RA ydata=DEC subset=true

If we wish to split the plotted points into two sets based on their R-B colours, we can write something like:

       stilts plot2d in=gals.fits xdata=RA ydata=DEC
                     subsetX='RMAG-BMAG>0' subsetY='RMAG-BMAG<=0'

This will generate a plot with two subsets shown using different colours and/or plotting symbols. These colours and symbols are selected automatically. More control over the appearance can be exercised by setting values for some of the other parameters with `NS` suffixes, for instance

       stilts plot2d in=gals.fits xdata=RA ydata=DEC
                                  subset_A='RMAG-BMAG>0'  colour_A=blue
                                  subset_B='RMAG-BMAG<=0' colour_B=red

Again, the suffix strings can be chosen to have any value as convenient.

The dataset- and subset-specific parameters must be put together if there are multiple datasets with multiple subsets to plot simultaneously, for instance:

       stilts plot2d in_1=gals.fits  xdata_1=RA ydata_1=DEC
                                     subset_1_A='RMAG-BMAG>0'  colour_1_A=blue
                                     subset_1_B='RMAG-BMAG<=0' colour_1_B=red
                     in_2=stars.fits xdata_2=RAJ2000 ydata_2=DEJ2000
                                     colour_2=green

Finally, it's not quite true that the suffixes chosen have no effect on the plot; they may influence the order in which sets are plotted. Markers drawn for sets plotted earlier may be obscured by the markers drawn for sets plotted later, so this can affect the appearance of the plot. If you want to control this, use the `sequence` parameter. For instance, to ensure that star data appears on top of galaxy data in the plot, do the following:

       stilts plot2d in_GAL=gals.fits   xdata_GAL=RA       ydata_GAL=DEC
                     in_STAR=stars.fits xdata_STAR=RAJ2000 ydata_STAR=DEJ2000
                     sequence=_GAL,_STAR

More examples can be found in the Examples subsections of the individual plotting command descriptions in Appendix B.

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STILTS - Starlink Tables Infrastructure Library Tool Set
Starlink User Note256
STILTS web page: http://www.starlink.ac.uk/stilts/
Author email: m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk
Mailing list: topcat-user@jiscmail.ac.uk