Re: Suggestions for gnuplot FAQ

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

On Friday 08 February 2008 06:50, Mark Seger wrote:
> I've just upgraded to gnuplot 4.2.2 and all my plotting stuff broke so I 
> went looking into the FAQ to try and figure out what to do and couldn't 
> find an answer.  I suspect other may have run into the same thing.  

Nothing much has changed in the gnuplot build process for at least 5 years,
so I really don't think you can blame it on version 4.2.2


> The bottom line is when I build the standard version of gnuplot and do a 
> 'set terminal' neither png nor x11 show up as valid types and clearly 
> the solution is to remake it with the appropriate settings.  The problem 
> is I can't find anything in the documentation to describe any  process 
> for doing this.  

The documentation is for using gnuplot, not installing it.
Following the standard unix/linux convention for source code distribution,
there are at least brief installation instructions in the file INSTALL.


> I did see references in the FAQ about libgd supporting  
> png, but nothing that says how to link the 2.  Does it just happen 
> automagically?  

Yes. The first step in installing from source is to run the "configure"
script. This will automagically search your computer for support libraries
for all the possible terminals, and automagically use the ones it can 
find.

> And as I said, nothing on X11.  This is a sles 10.1  
> system I'm running on and perhaps the out-of-the-box configuration of it 
> is the issue because when I build gnuplot on RHEL5 it just worked.

Yes. Probably you do not have the development packages installed for
libgd, x11, and so on.  Install these first, so that gnuplot can find them.


-- 
Ethan A Merritt            Courier Deliveries: 1959 NE Pacific
Dept of Biochemistry
Health Sciences Building
University of Washington - Seattle WA 98195-7742