gnuplot-beta

How to disable/ignore "pause"?

[Mojca M. <moj...@gm...>]

I'm sorry for a stupid question (probably not the most appropriate for
this list, but I didn't find the answer yet): how can I ignore
"pause"? I would like to call gnuplot from an external program (with
"set terminal whatever", has to produce a couple of graphics and then
exit quitely) and "I can't afford to hire a robot" to keep pushing
"enter" on pauses triggered with "pause -1"? Pause is good for
interactive terminals, but not when writing images into a file.

I would appreciate any hints,
    Mojca

Re: How to disable/ignore "pause"?

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Monday 17 April 2006 02:05 pm, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> I'm sorry for a stupid question (probably not the most appropriate for
> this list, but I didn't find the answer yet): how can I ignore
> "pause"? I would like to call gnuplot from an external program (with
> "set terminal whatever", has to produce a couple of graphics and then
> exit quitely) and "I can't afford to hire a robot" to keep pushing
> "enter" on pauses triggered with "pause -1"? Pause is good for
> interactive terminals, but not when writing images into a file.

This is a strange question, because "pause -1" should return
immediately if the input is from a script.
How, exactly, are you feeding your commands to gnuplot?
And if you are piping the commands from an external program,
why is it listening to the keyboard even if you *were* to 
hire a robot key-presser?



Off-the-wall suggestions, since I don't really understand how
your problem is created.

1) Don't put any pause statements in your automated scripts to begin with

2) sed -e 's/pause -1//' < script | gnuplot

3) gnuplot script < /bin/true


-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle WA

Re: How to disable/ignore "pause"?

[Mojca M. <moj...@gm...>]

On 4/17/06, Ethan Merritt wrote:
> On Monday 17 April 2006 02:05 pm, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> > I'm sorry for a stupid question (probably not the most appropriate for
> > this list, but I didn't find the answer yet): how can I ignore
> > "pause"? I would like to call gnuplot from an external program (with
> > "set terminal whatever", has to produce a couple of graphics and then
> > exit quitely) and "I can't afford to hire a robot" to keep pushing
> > "enter" on pauses triggered with "pause -1"? Pause is good for
> > interactive terminals, but not when writing images into a file.
>
> This is a strange question, because "pause -1" should return
> immediately if the input is from a script.
> How, exactly, are you feeding your commands to gnuplot?

I have a gnuplot.bat with
    c:\path-to-wgnuplot.exe %*
and I call it with
    gnuplot somescript.plt
where somescript.plt might be something like
    set terminal context
    set output "somefile.tex"
    plot sin(x)
    pause -1
    plot cos(x)
or perhaps
    load "somefile.dem" # any demo file from the distribution

Then a pause windows pops up and wants me to press Enter in order to procee=
d.

I'm still using the "old" windows terminal. Perhaps wxwidgets behave better=
.

> And if you are piping the commands from an external program,
> why is it listening to the keyboard even if you *were* to
> hire a robot key-presser?

I'm not piping (I guess). I'm only calling "gnuplot[.bat]
somescript.plt" from TeX.

> Off-the-wall suggestions, since I don't really understand how
> your problem is created.
>
> 1) Don't put any pause statements in your automated scripts to begin with

Sure, but if I want to test demo scripts out of the box ... I won't
write any pause statements in my scripts (although I still might want
to use the same code for testing the plots where I need pauses and for
producing high quality plots where I would want them to be ignored).

> 2) sed -e 's/pause -1//' < script | gnuplot
>
> 3) gnuplot script < /bin/true

But that can't be used under windows (where I'm experiencing the "problem")=
.
I don't have access to any linux box at the moment, but well ... I can
try what happens there.

GhostScript has -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE switches for the same purpose for example=
.

Thanks,
    Mojca

Re: How to disable/ignore "pause"?

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

Ethan Merritt wrote:

> Off-the-wall suggestions, since I don't really understand how
> your problem is created.
> 
> 1) Don't put any pause statements in your automated scripts to begin with
> 
> 2) sed -e 's/pause -1//' < script | gnuplot
> 
> 3) gnuplot script < /bin/true

Hans said the other day to try something like

gnuplot all.dem < /dev/null

Could try that.

Dan

Re: How to disable/ignore "pause"?

[<br...@ph...>]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> I have a gnuplot.bat with
>     c:\path-to-wgnuplot.exe %*

Calling that batch file gnuplot.bat instead of wgnuplot.bat is creating 
smoke screen that hides the crucial detail: that you're doing this on MS 
Windows.  That's one single gnuplot platform where pause -1 can't detect 
that stdin was redirected (because Win32 GUI apps like wgnuplot don't 
*have* a stdin, so nothing to redirect), and therefore the usual method 
of short-circuiting pause -1 doesn't work.

> I'm still using the "old" windows terminal. Perhaps wxwidgets behave better.

IIRC it doesn't.  Wxwidgets only replaces the graph window, but not the 
text console window, nor the pause window.

> I'm not piping (I guess). 

Correctly.  To pipe, you would have to use pgnuplot, not wgnuplot.

Re: How to disable/ignore "pause"?

[Mojca M. <moj...@gm...>]

On 4/18/06, Hans-Bernhard Br=F6ker  wrote:
> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> > I have a gnuplot.bat with
> >     c:\path-to-wgnuplot.exe %*
>
> Calling that batch file gnuplot.bat instead of wgnuplot.bat is creating
> smoke screen that hides the crucial detail: that you're doing this on MS
> Windows.

I'm sorry that I forgot to mention that. I wasn't aware that gnuplot
in windows behaves differently from the rest of the terminals in this
respect.

> That's one single gnuplot platform where pause -1 can't detect
> that stdin was redirected (because Win32 GUI apps like wgnuplot don't
> *have* a stdin, so nothing to redirect), and therefore the usual method
> of short-circuiting pause -1 doesn't work.

So is there any remedy for that? Could I set any variable which will
explicitely tell gnuplot to ignore pauses?

> > I'm still using the "old" windows terminal. Perhaps wxwidgets behave be=
tter.
>
> IIRC it doesn't.  Wxwidgets only replaces the graph window, but not the
> text console window, nor the pause window.
>
> > I'm not piping (I guess).
>
> Correctly.  To pipe, you would have to use pgnuplot, not wgnuplot.

How can I compile gnuplot so that I would get pgnuplot instead of
wgnuplot? What's the main difference between the two variants?

Thanks a lot,
    Mojca

Re: How to disable/ignore "pause"?

[<br...@ph...>]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> On 4/18/06, Hans-Bernhard Bröker  wrote:
>> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>>> I have a gnuplot.bat with
>>>     c:\path-to-wgnuplot.exe %*
>> Calling that batch file gnuplot.bat instead of wgnuplot.bat is creating
>> smoke screen that hides the crucial detail: that you're doing this on MS
>> Windows.
> 
> I'm sorry that I forgot to mention that. I wasn't aware that gnuplot
> in windows behaves differently from the rest of the terminals in this
> respect.

It's not the terminal that behaves differently --- it's the console that 
handles text I/O for the gnuplot command line.  Windows originally 
didn't have the notion of a console program at all, back when gnuplot 
was ported to this platform (16-bit Windows 3.x).  So the people back 
then had to create their own poor-man's equivalent of xterm: the 
wgnuplot text window.  This is a graphical window handling non-graphical 
text input and output.  But it has no connection to the concept of a 
stdin or stdout channel.

I've been working on and off on a re-write of this part of the Windows 
port, to use a genuine Win32 console instead of our home-grown one.  If 
that ever bears fruit, it'll solve this problem.  Until then, you can't 
wgnuplot to pipe in or out.

> So is there any remedy for that? Could I set any variable which will
> explicitely tell gnuplot to ignore pauses?

No.

> How can I compile gnuplot so that I would get pgnuplot instead of
> wgnuplot? 

You can't.  pgnuplot is not a variant of wgnuplot, it's built as a 
separate, small program that communicates with wgnuplot.

If you want a fully console-compatible gnuplot on Win32, you have to get 
the Cygwin binary.  The delivered package of that uses and requires X11, 
but you can also build a console-only one by disabling X11.

Re: How to disable/ignore "pause"?

[Mojca M. <moj...@gm...>]

On 4/20/06, Hans-Bernhard Br=F6ker wrote:
> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> > On 4/18/06, Hans-Bernhard Br=F6ker  wrote:
> >> Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> >>> I have a gnuplot.bat with
> >>>     c:\path-to-wgnuplot.exe %*
> >> Calling that batch file gnuplot.bat instead of wgnuplot.bat is creatin=
g
> >> smoke screen that hides the crucial detail: that you're doing this on =
MS
> >> Windows.
> >
> > I'm sorry that I forgot to mention that. I wasn't aware that gnuplot
> > in windows behaves differently from the rest of the terminals in this
> > respect.
>
> It's not the terminal that behaves differently --- it's the console that
> handles text I/O for the gnuplot command line.  Windows originally
> didn't have the notion of a console program at all, back when gnuplot
> was ported to this platform (16-bit Windows 3.x).  So the people back
> then had to create their own poor-man's equivalent of xterm: the
> wgnuplot text window.  This is a graphical window handling non-graphical
> text input and output.  But it has no connection to the concept of a
> stdin or stdout channel.
>
> I've been working on and off on a re-write of this part of the Windows
> port, to use a genuine Win32 console instead of our home-grown one.  If
> that ever bears fruit, it'll solve this problem.  Until then, you can't
> wgnuplot to pipe in or out.
>
> > So is there any remedy for that? Could I set any variable which will
> > explicitely tell gnuplot to ignore pauses?
>
> No.
>
> > How can I compile gnuplot so that I would get pgnuplot instead of
> > wgnuplot?
>
> You can't.  pgnuplot is not a variant of wgnuplot, it's built as a
> separate, small program that communicates with wgnuplot.
>
> If you want a fully console-compatible gnuplot on Win32, you have to get
> the Cygwin binary.  The delivered package of that uses and requires X11,
> but you can also build a console-only one by disabling X11.

OK, thanks for the explanations. I'll compile the demo files on a
linux box then, write a note to the users of the module about that and
wait for the next & better version of the windows terminal for gnuplot
;)

Mojca