Re: gnuplot 4.2 fails to run gretl files

[snvv101 <sn...@gm...>]

On Monday 13 April 2009 02:41:42 Ethan Merritt wrote:
> On Sunday 12 April 2009, Allin Cottrell wrote:
> > On Sun, 12 Apr 2009, snvv wrote:
> > > Problem:
> > > When I try to create a graph it fails
> > >
> > > Operating System:
> > > Operating System Debian sid
> > > gretl ver. 1.8.0
> > > gnuplot ver 4.2 patchlevel 5 ...
> > >
> > > gnuplot: using libgd png driver
> > > stderr: 'Could not find/open font when opening font "arial", using
> > > internal non-scalable font
> > > ' ...
> > > Additional comments
> > > The first line of the created gnuplot file is:
> > >
> > > set term png truecolor small size 680,400
> >
> > This is primarily a bug with the libgd installation, which can't
> > find the arial font.
>
> I wouldn't call that a libgd installation problem.
>
> Gnuplot needs to try some default truetype font; it happens to use Arial
> because that is very common.   The error message is telling you that
> either (a) you don't have Arial installed at all and should pick a
> different defaultfont (environmental variable GNUPLOT_DEFAULT_GDFONT)
> or (b) you do have Arial installed but in a directory that is not part of
> the font search path (environmental variable GDFONTPATH).
>
> libgd can be correctly installed, but still you need to specify where
> your fonts are located.
>
> > However, I think there's a case for saying
> > there's a minor gnuplot bug here: given the terminal setting
> > quoted above, why is gnuplot giving the error message about arial?
> > Isn't "small" a directive to use the libgd internal font?
>
> There was a long thread arguing this point on the usenet group
> recently.   People have old scripts that use the keyword "small".
> When run with a modern gnuplot that supports scalable fonts,
> (i.e. anything since the version 4.0) what should happen by default?
> My perspective is that over the years there were many
> queries/complaints about enhanced text or text rotation not working
> in PNG, caused by a failure to specify a scalable font.  This was
> solved by having gd.trm try to find a scalable font by default, using
> a couple of common font names.  Yes, this makes it harder to explicitly
> request a built-in non-scalable font, but the recent usenet query was
> honestly the first time I've ever seen such a request.
>
> > (Off topic here, but gretl -- a third party caller of gnuplot --
> > is getting confused by that error message; it doesn't expect it
> > because previous gnuplot versions didn't emit it.)
>
> I don't think there has ever been an expectation that error messages
> will not change.  Some of them are emitted by one of the support
> libraries, not by the gnuplot code per se.

Hello,
Some more findings...

What i did:
export GDFONTPATH="/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts" 
gnuplot> set term png font arial 12

gnuplot> set term png font arial 12
Terminal type set to 'png'
Options are 'nocrop font arial 12 '

When I try to create a graph gretl gives:
Could not find/open font when opening font "arial", using internal non-
scalable font

Then I run gretl from command line to get more error messages and here is what 
I have:
gnuplot: using libgd png driver
stderr: 'Could not find/open font when opening font "arial", using internal 
non-scalable font
'
gretl_errmsg: 'Could not find/open font when opening font "arial", using 
internal non-scalable font
'
Failed command: 'gnuplot "/home/snvv101/.gretl/gpttmp.hIR18b"'

Finally, I do believe this should be a libgd problem?

Any suggestion is welcome.

Thank you.
snvv