Re: [Plplot-general] Using plplot in an interactive environment

[Maurice L. <mj...@ga...>]

Andreas Dietrich writes:
 > c) Generate immediate plmeta-represenation in the main process and
 > fork()/exec(plrender) to display it. This could even provide interactive
 > data readout via fifo. Drawback: plrender cannot read from a pipe or a 
 > fifo(fgetpos fails). This means
 > 
 >    + temporary files have to created
 >    
 >    + An existing plot-window cannot be updated or reused. Plrender will read
 >    to EOF and then wait for the window to be closed.
 >     
 > I really like c) because of its simplicity and because it is _almost_
 > working as I want. Now if just plrender could read from a fifo. 
 > 
 > Looking at plmeta.c it seems that writing to a pipe was considered (but not
 > finished, at least one more if(isfile) is needed), so it may be possible to
 > patch plrender to work from a pipe (perhaps losing a feature or two), but I
 > do not yet understand the code good enough. Does anybody out there
 > understand the design of plmeta files?

Your change works fine.  Just a case of bitrot, since I almost never test
the i/o to/from a pipe.  Certainly the plmeta driver is supposed to be able to
write to a pipe, and plrender to read from one.  I remember adding that
capability, ages ago.  I tested it with:

x07c -dev plm -o - | plrender -dev xwin -i -

works great.  Available in current cvs image.

-- 
Maurice LeBrun    mj...@ga...