"Pretty" plots in IDL

Using IDL a lot I am a little tired of typing out the specific keywords for plots every time. I have quickly created a "pretty.pro" to go with CHloadct.pro which updates the plot variables to nicer ones. The changes are below:

Add the code to your path and then type pretty before plotting and they become much easier to read.

;-------------------------------------------;

;pretty

;-------------------------------------------;

;Makes plots that much prettier


;Christina Hedges

;chedges@ast.cam.ac.uk

;-------------------------------------------;



pro pretty 

  loadct,39,/silent

  device,decomposed=0

  !p.font=1

  !p.charsize=4

  !p.color=cgcolor('black')

  !p.background=cgcolor('white')

  !x.thick=3

  !y.thick=3

  !x.margin*=0.8

  !p.thick=2

  plotsym,0,/fill

end

Much better! If, for whatever reason, you want to undo the pretty plot just use "cleanplot.pro" which resets everything.