Re: [Plplot-general] png driver in PLplot 5.9.5

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On 2010-12-09 10:08+0100 José Luis García Pallero wrote:

> Hello,
> I'm trying to use the x16c example in order to produce a *.png file. I
> have compiled the source, but when I run it only six options for
> devices appears:
>
> Plotting Options:
> < 1> ps         PostScript File (monochrome)
> < 2> psc        PostScript File (color)
> < 3> xfig       Fig file
> < 4> null       Null device
> < 5> mem        User-supplied memory device
> < 6> svg        Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG 1.1)
>
> Then I try, before plinit() function:
>
> plsdev("png");
> plsetopt("-o","myplot.png");
>
> The program compiles ok, but when I run it appears the warning:
>
> Requested device png not available
>
> and the plotting options appears again.
>
> I'm using PLplot 5.9.5 from Debian GNU/Linux Sid repositories.
> Apparently, the documentation says that 5.9.5 has the capability of
> export *.png format but, what is the correct way to do this?

Hi José:

You really don't want the png device.  We deprecated that starting
with release 5.9.3 for the reasons mentioned in our release
announcements for 5.9.3 and subsequent releases.

Instead, I recommend you use the cairo-based pngcairo device which is
available as part of the plplot9-driver-cairo package which you should
install.

In general, to find all PLplot-related packages on Debian, use the

apt-cache search plplot

command.  To find a description of a given package, use the apt-cache
show command, e.g.,

apt-cache show plplot9-driver-cairo

That tells you:

"This package provides the Cairo driver module for PLplot.  It is
based on the Cairo 2D graphics library with supporting multiple output
devices (X-Window, PDF, PostScript, and PNG)."

I also recommend pngqt if you are building PLplot from scratch, but
our qt device driver (which includes the pngqt device) has not yet
been packaged for Debian at least on my Debian testing system.  You
might want to build PLplot (either 5.9.7 or the svn trunk version)
from scratch in any case since a lot of progress has been made since
the release of 5.9.5.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
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