Alright, let’s talk about diving back into gmt2. Wow, just saying that name brings back memories, not all of them super fun, if I’m being honest.
So, I had this task pop up recently. Needed to reproduce some old figures from a project done ages ago. And guess what? The original scripts were all written using gmt2. Yeah, version two. Not the shiny new versions we have now. My first thought was, “Oh boy, this is going to be interesting.”
First hurdle: getting the darn thing to run. On my current setup? Not a chance, really. It just wouldn’t play nice. Had to dust off an old virtual machine running a Linux distribution from back in the day. Took me a good chunk of time just to get that environment set up and gmt2 installed without it complaining about missing ancient libraries. That was step one, just getting the tools ready.
Then came the scripts themselves. Looking at that gmt2 syntax again… it felt like a different world. Commands like pscoast, grdimage, psxy… they’re still around, sure, but the options and the way you chained them together felt so clunky compared to what I’m used to now. Everything felt very specific, very rigid. You had to get the `-J`, `-R`, `-B` options just right, in the right order, or it would just spit out errors or a blank page.
I spent a lot of time just trying to understand what each line was supposed to do. The comments in the old scripts were… let’s just say ‘minimal’. So it was mostly trial and error.
- Run the script.
- See what broke.
- Look up the command options (had to find old gmt2 manuals online, thankfully some folks archive that stuff).
- Tweak a parameter.
- Run it again.
Repeat that cycle, like, a hundred times. Felt like I was deciphering hieroglyphics sometimes. Especially getting the map projections and boundaries (`-R` and `-J` flags) to match the original figures. That part was a real headache.
Data formatting was another fun challenge. The scripts expected data in very specific layouts. Sometimes plain text tables, sometimes older binary grid formats. Had to massage the input data quite a bit to make gmt2 happy. One misplaced space or a slightly different number format and the whole thing would fall over.
Slowly, painfully, I started getting bits working. A coastline here, some data points plotted there. Eventually, after a lot of fiddling and comparing outputs side-by-side with the old figures, I managed to get something that looked pretty close. It wasn’t easy, and it certainly wasn’t quick.
Looking back, gmt2 was definitely a powerful tool for its era. It let people make some really sophisticated maps back then. But using it today felt like stepping into a time machine. It works, kind of, if you beat it into submission. But man, I’m glad we have newer tools now. The whole experience just reminded me how far things have come. Got the job done in the end, which was the goal, but I was pretty relieved to shut down that old VM when I was finished.
