xhpgl Also has some added features. xhpgl supports up to 8 different pens where the 7470A routine only supports 2. The color/pen assignments are user definable. All pen colors are read from a file called $HOME/.hpcolors. The colors supported are: black, red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, magenta, gold, maroon, turquoise, violet, orange and white. The .hpcolors file is of the form "pen# color". Only pens 1 to 8 are used. an error will occur if a pen number larger than 8 is given. If no color file is found the program will display a message and use internal values. The -cf color_file option may be used to over-ride the default color file on a case by case bases.
The text used in xhpgl is of fixed size. That means that there is no scaling or slanting of text allowed. This is a temporary problem and will be incorporated in future versions that are compatible with X11. To help make text more usable xhpgl will select a font based on the window size. Also, the -fn option may be used to specify any user font instead of the default selection.
xhpgl has two simple commands built into it for controlling the display window. the first is a 'q' which will quit the program, and an 'r' will redraw the display. All other keys and mouse activity are ignored. When part or all of the window is messed up due to X events and window overlaps, xhpgl will not automatically regenerate the window image. The "r" command must be used. This will save some long painting times.