It is assumed that aipsview will be started from a Unix C-shell in an X Windows environment. The simple, default startup for aipsview is a good way to start, before trying any customization. Start aipsview by typing aipsview at a command line prompt, either from the directory in which aipsview resides or by giving the path name. It may be useful to start aipsview from the directory in which your data files reside, although once aipsview is started you may change to any data directory you wish.
Aipsview uses PGPLOT for vector plotting (axes, contours, etc.). The PGPLOT font file grfont.dat (distributed with aipsview) must be available to aipsview in order for vector plotting to work. Aipsview will look for grfont.dat in the current directory, from which aipsview was started, and in the PGPLOT standard /usr/local/pgplot (which is useful if PGPLOT is already installed on your system and its files are in the PGPLOT standard locations. You may also use the PGPLOT environment variable PGPLOT_FONT to define the location of grfont.dat.
It is possible to use an aipsview X-defaults file to set defaults for directories containing data and color palettes, window sizes, colors, fonts, and whether image information is displayed as part of the image window or in a separate window. It is also possible to set the number of colors used by aipsview to display images. Instructions for customizing X-defaults are given in Appendix A.1.2.
There are also several command line switches which control the operation of aipsview; these are described in detail in Appendix A.1.3. These override any corresponding X-defaults resources, which in turn override any corresponding environment variables (n.b., information on the limited number of environment variables is given in Appendix A.1.1). At the end of the command line switches, aipsview can take one or more filename arguments. These files will each be automatically opened as aipsview starts up. For example, aipsview -pgDevice /PS smallcube.fits orion.fits will start up aipsview with the default PGPLOT device as /PS (monochrome landscape PostScript) and will load smallcube.fits and orion.fits immediately.