The IBIS package is designed for use under the Unix operating system. The full package has been tested on SGI workstations running v.5 and v.6 of their operating systems. The numerical software has been run on an extensive set of machines and should compile and run on most Unix workstations.
The IBIS package of programs relies heavily on existing software, and software packages. The majority of this software is freely available and widely used on Unix systems.
The IBIS programs utilize OpenGL for the core graphs library for both the color and line images. OpenGL is a commercial product of Silicon Graphics Inc. and is included in many workstation software bundles. OpenGl is documented at the web site http://www.sgi.com/Technology/OpenGL/.
The file format conversion programs utilize the NetPBM package. This package converts images from one format to another by way of an intermediate format, ppm, pnm or pbm. The NetPBM package is available free of charge over the internet at ftp://ftp.cs.ubc.ca/ftp/archive/netpbm/ among other places.
The graphical user interface to the postprocessing programs requires a Tcl/Tk interpreter and the "wish" windowing shell, freely available at ftp://ftp.smli.com/pub/tcl/ among other places.
The postprocessing programs also include a script that creates mpeg movies. This is a standard animation format, and the software to create an mpeg movie is available via anonymous ftp at havefun.stanford.edu in /pub/mpeg. Software to play an mpeg movie is available via anonymous ftp at ftp.geom.umn.edu.
The postprocessing programs incorporate colormap data files. These files consist of 256 lines each with 3 integers in the range [0,255]. These integers specify the rgb values of a color. IBIS has some color editing facilities, but it may be useful to obtain a program called icol. This is a graphical program that allows one to edit colormaps. icol is freely available at http://www.arc.unn.edu under the graphics and visualization lab.
Finally, to produce high quality line plots, IBIS uses gnuplot. It is available from the shareware foundation, but is very likely to be installed in most Unix locations already. If not, the official distribution site for the gnuplot source is ftp.dartmouth.edu [129.170.16.4, soon to be 129.170.8.11], the file is called /pub/gnuplot/gnuplot3.5.tar.Z. Official mirrors of that distribution are (for Australia) ftp.monash.edu.au [130.194.11.18] and (for Europe) irisa.irisa.fr [131.254.254.2]. A gnuplot FAQ is located at
http://www.cs.ruu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/graphics/gnuplot-faq.html