gnuplot and DISPLAY

[Allin C. <cot...@wf...>]

Hello,

I've been calling gnuplot from my program, gretl, to generate 
graphs, for quite some time now.  Since I require that gnuplot be 
able to generate PNG output, I have a configure check in my 
program for this, namely

echo "set term png" | `which gnuplot` 2>/dev/null && \
gnuplot_png=yes

This has worked with versions of gnuplot up to 4.0.  I have just 
updated to version 4.2.0 and it now fails, if the command is not 
run with the X11 display set.  With a non-X11 enabled ssh 
connection, I get:

waverley:~$ echo "set term png" | /usr/local/bin/gnuplot
   gnuplot: unable to open display ''
   gnuplot: X11 aborted.

With previous gnuplot versions it was not necessary that the 
DISPLAY variable be set to something valid for X11.

Can anyone suggest a workaround for this?  Thanks.

-- 
Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University, NC