[Gnuplot-info] Gnuplot.app for Mac users

[Thomas T. <Tho...@gm...>]

Dear Gnuplot maintainers,

we have created Octave.app for PPC 10.3 and i386 10.4 Mac users that can be 
downloaded at
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2888. One of the last 
things that need to be done for Octave.app is to make a ready-to-run binary 
release of gnuplot available that can then be taken as the background plotting 
engine. That's why we quickly have decided to create another Mac application 
that can be set up as easy as Octave.app but is not bundled with Octave.app and 
that we call this time: Gnuplot.app.

We nearly have finished building Gnuplot.app PPC and Gnuplot.app i386 with 
gnuplot version 4.2 including most features like gdlib, jpg and png (but not 
wxWindows because of a size-explosion of the *.dmg image and no pdf-support 
because of a missing GPL-compatiple license). We didn't create a universal 
binary Gnuplot.app because we don't see a real advantage of universal binaries 
for Mac (we already have gone through this whole discussion about universal 
binaries or two binaries of Octave.app at one of the mailing lists at octave.org 
months ago).

For building either the PPC version or i386 version of Gnuplot.app we have 
created a single shell script - it's not very nice but very powerful if we have 
a look at the Gnuplot.app result that comes out (and there are also some other 
external files that are needed, eg. a 128x128bit gnuplot.icns file, the 
.DS_Store file and the corresponding background image...). Some very important 
Mac-features of Gnuplot.app (like the ones of Octave.app) are:

  - there is no easier way of installation (drag'n drop somewhere)
  - and no easier way of deinstallation (drag'n drop into trash)
  - it's bundled, no other dependency must be installed (AquaTerm inclusion)
  - gnuplot can also be called from the command line of Terminal.app or xterm

The inclusion of AquaTerm into Gnuplot.app has taken a while but we were able to 
set it up very nice ;) The user must not install any AquaTerm.pkg anymore, the 
necessary AquaTerm.framework is included into Gnuplot.app directly and it is 
started automatically if the user plots something the first time to the AquaTerm 
backend. There is one problem left ie. that we are not able to compile AquaTerm 
"not universal", ie. whatever PPC *or* i386 is set in the projects preferences 
in this XCode program of the AquaTerm.project it is not taken for compilation. 
It always creates a universal binary (that's not good because SDK 10.4.9u then 
must be taken and so we can't create a 10.3 PPC version like we did for 
Octave.app PPC). The manual of XCode says: change compiler option ARCH and SDK 
in the preferences dialog and you're done ;( If it would be that easy...

Maybe my email hits you like a hammer (I don't hope so) but I wanted to get into 
contact with you in a very early stage because you also might have a thousand 
questions that need to be answered and I'm also interested in your further 
requirements for an official release. And I'd also like to address our interests 
that would be that the PPC and the i386 Gnuplot.app could be hosted on your side 
of sourceforge.net (because octave.sourceforge.net would not be the right place) 
and that somebody could continue working on this topic for future releases of a 
Gnuplot.app that understands much more about gnuplot in general than we do. The 
problem is that the one or the other might have a special gnuplot-depending 
question and I don't know if we do have the knowledge and the time to answer 
specific internals...

The build scripts need some more clean-up but I think that I'm able to send it 
in a few days (whom? or where?). I can also prepare a PPC *dmg and a i386 *.dmg 
for very early alpha-tests (<5MB each *.dmg). Please also reply any comments and 
questions directly because I'm not a subscriber to any of your lists. I think 
hosting a Gnuplot.app would also be of your interest as there doesn't exist one 
at your download site for 4.2 at the moment and so I hope that we can find 
together soon...

   Thomas