#292 Terminal type x11 unknown but still documented?

[Thomas Ruedas]

I just installed v.6.0.0 on my Mac and tried to set the terminal type to x11, but I'm told that the terminal type is now "unknown". Indeed, if I check the online help for term type x11, it is not listed anymore, but in the User Guide it still is. Does it exist or not? If not, it should be removed from the User Guide.
I don't know if it matters, but I haven't installed the X11 Quartz stuff for the Mac and installed gnuplot via homebrew. Does that somehow affect the choice of terminal types available?

[Ethan Merritt]

The x11 terminal type definitely still exists. Whether it was included in the build of the executable you are running is another question. When you type (in gnuplot) set terminal with no further parameters it should print out a list of terminal types included in that particular copy of gnuplot. Is x11 listed?

I don't know how much homebrew tailors the configuration to what it sees installed on your machine. It's quite possible that when building gnuplot it only includes the x11 terminal if it sees you have X11 Quartz already installed. I suggest you ask about that on a homebrew forum.

In general the User Manual has a section for all possible terminals. It would be unusual for every one of them to be present in any one gnuplot executable - some are Mac only, some are deprecated relics that nevertheless someone might want for compatibility with old scripts, some are alternatives to each other, and so on.

[Thomas Ruedas]

Thanks for explaining this, Ethan. No, x11 is not listed among the available terminal types, which I show below. I guess I will ask about this at some Homebrew forum then.

Available terminal types:
       cairolatex  LaTeX picture environment using graphicx package and Cairo backend
           canvas  HTML Canvas object
              cgm  Computer Graphics Metafile
          context  ConTeXt with MetaFun (for PDF documents)
          domterm  DomTerm terminal emulator with embedded SVG
             dumb  ascii art for anything that prints text
              dxf  dxf-file for AutoCad (default size 120x80)
              emf  Enhanced Metafile format
         epscairo  eps terminal based on cairo
         epslatex  LaTeX picture environment using graphicx package
              fig  FIG graphics language V3.2 for XFIG graphics editor
              gif  GIF images using libgd and TrueType fonts
             hpgl  HP7475 and relatives [number of pens] [eject]
             jpeg  JPEG images using libgd and TrueType fonts
       kittycairo  kitty in-terminal graphics using cairo
          kittygd  kitty in-terminal graphics using libgd
              lua  Lua generic terminal driver
             pcl5  PCL5e/PCL5c printers using HP-GL/2
         pdfcairo  pdf terminal based on cairo
           pict2e  LaTeX2e picture environment
              png  PNG images using libgd and TrueType fonts
         pngcairo  png terminal based on cairo
       postscript  PostScript graphics, including EPSF embedded files (*.eps)
          pslatex  LaTeX picture environment with PostScript \specials
            pstex  plain TeX with PostScript \specials
         pstricks  LaTeX picture environment with PSTricks macros
               qt  Qt cross-platform interactive terminal
          sixelgd  sixel using libgd and TrueType fonts
              svg  W3C Scalable Vector Graphics
          tek40xx  Tektronix 4010 and others; most TEK emulators
          tek410x  Tektronix 4106, 4107, 4109 and 420X terminals
          texdraw  LaTeX texdraw environment
             tikz  TeX TikZ graphics macros via the lua script driver
         tkcanvas  Tk canvas widget
          unknown  Unknown terminal type - not a plotting device
            vttek  VT-like tek40xx terminal emulator
             webp  single frame or animation using cairo, pango, and libwebp
            xterm  Xterm Tektronix 4014 Mode

[Hiroki Motoyoshi]

I am only one of the homebrew users, but I would like to comment.

Unfortunately, gnuplot installed with homebrew only supports qt as an interactive terminal, x11 and wxt are disabled.

Before homebrew version 2.0.0 it was possible to enable x11 using the install option, but now that option is gone.

Because of this situation, I build gnuplot myself. For reference, when using Xquartz, I pass the following options to configure

        --with-x 
        --x-includes=/opt/X11/include 
        --x-libraries=/opt/X11/lib

To build within the homebrew framework, you can prepare your own modified homebrew formula (gnuplot.rb) and build it from source using the '--build-from-source' option, but I have not tried this.

[Ethan Merritt]

Ticket moved from /p/gnuplot/bugs/2684/

Can't be converted:

• _milestone:
• _priority: