Ideal problem: Help!

[Swamp Thing]

I've got a problem with the IDEAL picture language.  I have written a front-end
to ideal which produces simple x-y plots.  IDEAL doesn't have a "Draw a point"
command, so I just draw a very short line.  Now, it would seem to me that the
time to process a program which draws 2*n lines should be twice that for
processing n lines.  But it's not.  Ideal takes ~10 minutes on a SUN to crank
out 1000 points, ~40 minutes to crank out 2000 points, and I for 5000 points, I
left the job running over night and killed it after it had eaten up > 700
minutes!  Anyone have any ideas?  

BTW, the output is going to an Imagen 5/480.  Does anyone have a filter for
leroy output for this machine?  We can get it working in Tektronix mode, but
the output is really marginal.

Respond by mail.  I'll post a summary if there is interest.  Thanks.




						Mark F. Flynn
						Department of Physics
						Washington University
						St. Louis, MO  63130
						ihnp4!wuphys!mff