[Plplot-general] PLPLOT installation...

[Ron G. <ro...@il...>]

I'm an old dinosaur who has decided to take the plunge and
abandon expectk Fortran and PGPLOT after nearly a decade for the 
luscious new potential offered by Python and PLPLOT.

I do appreciate the generosity of the team in providing
this tool, but I was a little surprised at all the
installation difficulties I encountered, and have
listed a few points here.  I hope that they will be
of some help, rather than merely show up my ignorance.

1. Documentation
   The pdf file printed here has some curious font
   problems.
   The PostScript file plplotdoc-0.4.3.ps.gz
   is not actually a gzip file, it is straight PS
   and prints correctly on the same printer (HP4100)

2. RedHat 7.2
   I had loaded Python2-2.2.1 (src-rpm) and your configure script
   in the 5.1.0 looks only for python2.1 files, so I
   hand-edited these.

   During the build there were problems in finding
   python_dynamic/Makefile.pre.in because of the failed
   link to /usr/lib/python2/config/Makefile.pre.in

   Although I tried python 2.1 I finally backtracked
   to python 1.6 and found a Misc/Makefile.pre.in
   which I copied to python_dynamic which enabled me
   to complete the build.

   The font files did not appear to be buildable with
   make fonts, and I more or less hand built these;
   it was also necessary to specify the libplplot.so
   in the gcc command - although I had done a make install.

3. Finally I have been looking for environment variables
   for the font files, directories etc.  Although I have
   set PLPLOT_HOME to /usr/local the font files are not found
   and the test programs fail.

4. My next challenge is SGI-IRIX, then alas Windows!

I am a little disappointed that I have had these problems since
my main aim was to produce new packages for distribution amongst
scientists who want at all costs to avoid installation difficulties.

I would be grateful for a little advice on useful environment
variables.

Thank you for your time!

Regards,  Ron Ghosh 
-- 
Ron Ghosh, Institut Laue Langevin
6 rue Jules Horowitz,                  telephone: +33-476207178
B.P. 156  cedex 9,                     secretary: +33-476207226
Grenoble, 38042 FRANCE                       fax: +33-476483906