[Plplot-devel] Plplot embedded in pyqt

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

To Allesandro:

Please let me know if/when you are subscribed to the plplot_devel list (see
http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=2915) so I don't end up putting double
e-mails into your mail box.

I have just put the relevant pyqt GUI front end files into cvs.  There are a
number of changes from your original files so could you please check that
the cvs version works for you?  I believe you were on the mailing list when
I previously today gave instructions about how to access the latest cvs
version, but I will send that separately if you didn't get that e-mail.

Here is the quick cookbook for the pyqt GUI frontend for plplot (which I
urge other plplot developers to try for themselves).

(1) install libqt (devel version of binary package if you are not building
it yourself).

(2) install sip (Allesandro has given details before).

(3) install pyqt (Allesandro has given details before).

(4) clean checkout of plplot from cvs.  Make sure there is no plplot dir
in the current directory when you do this since the cvs checkout
will create a new plplot directory in the current directory.

(5)  cd plplot; make configure; \
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/plplot --with-double ; \
make

(6) cd tmp; make pyqt_plmodule.so

This makes the additional module that you need for the pyqt GUI. This module
will be automatically made under configuration control in near future, i.e.,
the "make" command in (5) will soon make this module if pyqt is available.

(7) Set your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to the directory where
libqt resides on your system.  On my system I compiled my own in a user
account so I specify

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH \
/home/software/kde2_download/debian_athlon_20011013/qt-copy/lib/

but you will want to do something different.  I believe I could have avoided
this if I had specified LD_RUN_PATH before building pyqt (or if that build
had used -rpath).  I recall I had to specify my qt location in any case for
that build to work so specifying LD_RUN_PATH (see man ld) in addition would
not be that difficult.

(8) ./prova.py #Note this (and all other files you need) are in the CVS
version so do not copy any other files into plplot tree for this test. This
brings up the pyqt GUI front end for plplot.  Click anywhere in the white
box and simply type

import xw08

(or any other of the xw?? examples except for xw09) and then click on
file-->run to get many nice looking plot examples.

Allesandro, once you have confirmed the cvs version works for you, could you
please put some page control in the GUI so each page of xw08 (or any other
of the multi-page examples) can be browsed?  IMHO, this should be a high
priority although I am sure there are plenty of other things you want to do
with this GUI now that it is working and in the CVS version of plplot.

Things I still need to do:

automatically make pyqt_plmodule.so (or not) under configuration control
depending on availability of pyqt.

Alan

email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902	FAX: 250-721-7715
snail-mail:
Dr. Alan W. Irwin
Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3055,
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, V8W 3P6
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