MONGO

Introduction

MONGO is an interactive graphics program written by Dr. John L. Tonry. Although many other graphics programs exist, MONGO remains my favorite because it is free, simple, and written in FORTRAN with a FORTRAN library of subroutines.

Documentation

The standard documentation for MONGO is distributed with the software. Documentation describing an older version of MONGO is available on the web. The "official" documentation consists of a manual released in 1994 and extensive notes, issued in 2000, that expand and correct the manual. Some subroutines are not currently documented and other parts of the documentation were unclear to me. So I am providing new revised documentation is an attempt to supply the missing pieces and to combine some sections of the manual and notes into a single document. I will also attempt to clarify some points.

This new version of the documentation will always be a work in progress. As of 2001 March 1, the 1994 manual and the MONGO2k Notes have been merged into a single document. A few additional subroutines have been documented. Several things remain to do. These include:

Make the notation consistent.
Include more examples.
Document more subroutines.
Create a "short reference".
Create a cross reference between interactive commands and subroutines.
Make the subroutine chapter self-contained.
Find and correct errors.

The new MONGO documentation will be available only as a web-based document.

Auxiliary subroutines

The FORTRAN library makes MONGO particularly interesting for me. Over time, we have created several MONGO routines that might be of more general interest. Also there are several Lick MONGO routines that are very useful but not available in the current version of MONGO. We plan to gather these routines into a collection available for downloading. You will be welcome to download any routines that you may find useful. You may redistribute them and/or modify them under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation.