[Plplot-devel] (almost un)limited success with Tcl bindings under Cygwin and MinGW

[Arjen M. <arj...@wl...>]

> On 2008-01-10 21:42+0100 Arjen Markus wrote:
>
>>>> On Tue, Jan 08, 2008 at 08:43:46AM +0100, Arjen Markus wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I tried to build PLplot for Tcl 8.4 under MingW (with the intent to
>>> move on to Tcl 8.5 if all went well), just to see what would happen
>>> (and to have access to the generated source code for inspection).
>>> In previous attempts - with Cygwin at least - there was all manner of
>>> problems, due to the incorrect indication of the particular platform.
>>>
>>> But with MingW building worked smoothly. I have not yet tested the
>>> build yet, did not have time. But this is encouraging!
>>>
>>
>> I have tried to get the examples working with Tcl (running pltcl)
>> under Cygwin and MinGW. I had some limited success:
>>
>> 1. The PostScript device works fine
>
> Congratulations.  I call that much more than limited success since
> troubles
> you had with -dev wingcc presumably have nothing to do with Tcl, and
> would,
> for example, also show up for the C examples.  Thus, the successful tcl
> example results with the PostScript device shows you now have the Tcl
> interface to PLplot working properly on both MinGW and Cygwin, and I hope
> you use your combination of Tcl and Windows skills to play further with
> this
> interface (and also -dev tk and the Tk examples) on those two platforms as
> well as the bare windows platform.
>

Hi Alan,

wise words indeed (see the - elliptical - subject line)!

The short story:
---------------
I have success now with Tcl under Cygwin and MinGW with the
wingcc device.


The long story:
--------------
I thought about the possible causes and concluded that it was the
way I was trying to run the examples: interactively.

The Tcl-shell, pltcl, can be used interactively, that is, you simply
type commands and that is what I did in order to find out what was
going on. I had to add some print statements in the initialisation
function because it would fail at first.

But that brings the Tcl-shell into a very awkward position:
- It reads commands from the command line
- It also has to attend to the message loop to properly update the
  displayed window

That is impossible for an non-threaded program under MS Windows.
(Though it seems to happen nicely under UNIX and Linux - you can
use the Tk-shell wish interactively).

Anyway: apart from this interactive use, if I simply run "x01"
(or any of the others) as a program, this problem disappears
and I get the pictures I expect!

Note:
This is for the wingcc device under MinGW and Cygwin.
(My earlier reported failure was for the Xwin device - I did
not read the list of available devices and usually wingcc is
number 1 ;).

I do need to fiddle around with a few environment variables
to get the programs to work, and I will document these
on the Wiki but that is a very small prize for this new
capability!

I have not tried the bare Windows variant yet - I did not
want to stretch my luck too far, but I may have time today
to try that as well.

Quick summary for the environment variables and files:
-----------------------------------------------------
Cygwin:
PATH should include /usr/X11R6/bin for the X11 library that is needed
TCL_LIBRARY should be set explicitly: /usr/share/tcl8.4

MinGW:
PL_LIBRARY should be set to the directory holding the file "plplot.tcl"


Regards,

Arjen