#2571 docs script file gives an error!

[Peter]

I have been trying to regenerate the plot style images in the documentation, which I believe are created by the script https://sourceforge.net/p/gnuplot/gnuplot-main/ci/master/tree/docs/plotstyles.gnu

When I try to run this script (gnuplot 5.4.2 & Linux Mint 20.3), I get an error saying:

"plotstyles.gnu" line 25: expected {else-clause}

I am unable to follow all the unindented, nested if-else statements, but by reformatting the script, I infer that there are a several sets of missing curly braces. The above error appears to be caused by one of the (deeply nested) else statements not being (immediately) followed by a '{' (together, of course, with terminating '}').

P.

[Peter]

FWIW: The keyword 'sparse' is also unrecognised on line 364. I am unable to find that in the current manual so presume it has been removed?

And while we are at it, line 412 complains "This copy of gnuplot cannot read png/gif/jpeg images". I am guessing that this might be a build n option that I am missing?

[Ethan Merritt]

That's backwards. "sparse" is a new keyword recently added to the development version. It does not exist in the 5.4 stable release branch.

[Ethan Merritt]

You have pulled the latest plotstyles script from the current development branch, but tried to run it using a gnuplot executable from the stable branch (version 5.4). The whole point of having parallel branches like this is so that new stuff can be added, tested, and modified in the development branch before it ever appears in a release labelled "stable".

What you should do instead is pull a copy of the plotstyles script from the same branch as your gnuplot executable. It's part of the release package prepared by the gnuplot project, but I do not know if Mint linux carries it forward into one of their distro packages.

[Peter]

OK. Thanks for explaining. I think I have assumed that the master branch would be the current release version rather than being the dev branch. Explicitly pulling the 5.4 branch does indeed work as expected. Thanks.