Configuration

Environment Variables

Some default settings of orto can be configured using the environment variables listed in Table 1.

Note, these options only apply when orto is used through its command line interface (CLI), and in the case of custom fonts, users must have the specified font installed on their system.

Additionally, changing some of the environment variables used for plotting may lead to unsupported and unexpected behaviour - you have been warned!

Variable Name	Description
orto_orca_load	Module load command(s) for ORCA
orto_local_scratch	Path to local scratch on compute node
orto_fontname	Name of font used in orto plots
orto_mathfont	Font used for maths in plots: dejavusans, dejavuserif, cm, stix, stixsans, or the name of an installed font
orto_fontsize	Size of plot text in pt (default 10)
orto_legend_fontsize	Size of plot legend text in pt (default 9)
orto_termcolor	If set (to any value) enables coloured output in Windows terminal
orto_plot_scale	On-screen magnification of plot windows (default 2). Does not affect saved images

The process for setting these variables depends on your platform

Mac and Linux users:

    export variablename=VALUE

For example:

    export orto_fontname=Arial

Windows CMD (Command Prompt) users can set variables temporarily using

    set variablename=

while Windows Powershell (PS) users can use

    $env:variablename=

these will persist only for the current window. To set Windows environment variables permanently, use the system environment variable window.

Plot size on screen

Plots made by orto are sized in inches (and with font sizes in points) so that saved images can be dropped straight into a publication at their native size - the terminal tells you which width to use when an image is saved.

At these sizes plot windows would be very small on a monitor, so orto magnifies every plot window (including its text, lines and markers) by a factor of 2 by default. This only changes how the plot is displayed; saved images keep their publication size and font sizes, including those saved from the plot window’s save button.

If plot windows are too large or too small for your screen, set orto_plot_scale to a different factor, e.g.

    export orto_plot_scale=1.5

and use orto_plot_scale=1 to recover matplotlib’s default size.

Terminal output

Mac and Linux users will see a colour-coded terminal output. By default this is disabled for Windows users since cmd does not support ASCII colour codes. If you are on Windows and are using an ASCII enabled terminal (e.g. Windows Terminal) you can enable colour-coded output by setting the orto_termcolor environment variable to any value in the system environment variable window.