plplot-general — PLplot user discussion group

Re: [Plplot-general] configuring the Fortran compiler under linux

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

Joachim Geiger writes:
 > does anyone know how to tell autoconf which fortran compiler it
 > should take since under linux there are various possibilities, e.g.
 > gnu, nag, fujitsu, ... . Or is the only possibility to change the standards
 > to hack the config.status?

Two ways:
1. configure with:

    $ F77=<compiler> ./configure --enable-f77

2. create the file ~/config/cf_plplot.in and put in it:

F77=<compiler>
enable_f77="yes"

which the configure script will source the next time it's run.

If not set, F77 defaults to a system-specific value ("f77" on Linux).  If a
compiler is not found matching given name, one last-ditch effort using the
name "g77" is made before giving up and turning off f77 bindings.

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

[Plplot-general] configuring the Fortran compiler under linux

[Joachim G. <ge...@ip...>]

Hi,
does anyone know how to tell autoconf which fortran compiler it
should take since under linux there are various possibilities, e.g.
gnu, nag, fujitsu, ... . Or is the only possibility to change the standards
to hack the config.status?
Best wishes
Joachim

--
-----------------------------------------------@\\
Joachim Geiger                                  @\\
Institute for Plasma Physics, Euratom Association\\\
Department E3                                     \\\__
Boltzmannstr. 2                                  (  \\ \
D-85748 Garching                                  \_ \\(_
Germany                                             ) \\ \
e-mail: joa...@ip...                   \  -  |
---------------------------------------------------  \____/

Re: [Plplot-general] png plots

[M. F. <mfr...@vi...>]

I had previously installed
gd-1.8.1-4mdk.i586.rpm gd-devel-1.8.1-4mdk.i586.rpm
gd-utils-1.8.1-4mdk.i586.rpm

I went to rpmfind.net looking for the gd devel you recommended.
It was not to be found. Where can I find the rpms you recommended?

Thanks.

Martin

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, Alan W. Irwin wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, M. Frankford wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> > 
> > > What was the output from configure?  Your problem is almost sure to be due
> > > to an old or non-existent header or library for one/some of libgd, libpng,
> > > or zlib.  --enable-png has no effect on configure if correct versions of
> > > these necessary libraries/headers are not installed in the usual place. What
> > > versions of all of those have you installed?  Where have you installed them
> > > on your system?  Have you included the headers (usually in a package with
> > > -dev or -devel in the name) with your installation of the libraries? What
> > > Unix/Linux system do you have?
> > 
> 
> > I am using Linux-Mandrake 7.2.  I have sucessfully used gd 1.8.1 to....
> 
> Thanks for that version information. On Mandrake 7.2 make sure you have
> installed the development versions of the libgd, libpng, and zlib packages.
> I don't have access to 7.2, but to give you some guidance these packages are
> called libgd1-devel-1.8.4-3mdk.i586.rpm, libpng2-devel-1.0.9-1mdk.i586.rpm,
> and zlib1-devel-1.1.3-15mdk.i586.rpm for Mandrake 8.0 (Of course you will
> also need the corresponding 3 packages without -devel in their names.)
> 
> I suspect some of these 6 packages (7.2 versions!) are currently not
> installed on your system, and rectification of this will solve your problem.
> 
> > Where is the output of the configure stored? 
> 
> It is just written to the screen (as stderr I believe) so just cut and paste
> that into your e-mail to me if installation of the required packages doesn't
> solve your problem.
> 
> > The gd.c code was compiled by make into gd.o so it must have found the
> > headers. 
> 
> That's a reasonable inference, but it turns out not to be correct. If
> configure doesn't find the essential headers and libraries, then it disables
> png, and gd.c becomes essentially an empty file through #define's.
> Compilation of this file produces a vacuous gd.o.  We may be changing this
> configuration method in the next version of PLplot.
> 
> Alan W. Irwin
> 
> 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 
> __________________________
> 
> Linux-powered astrophysics
> __________________________
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Plplot-general mailing list
> Plp...@pl...
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-general
> 

Re: [Plplot-general] png plots

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

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, M. Frankford wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> 
> > What was the output from configure?  Your problem is almost sure to be due
> > to an old or non-existent header or library for one/some of libgd, libpng,
> > or zlib.  --enable-png has no effect on configure if correct versions of
> > these necessary libraries/headers are not installed in the usual place. What
> > versions of all of those have you installed?  Where have you installed them
> > on your system?  Have you included the headers (usually in a package with
> > -dev or -devel in the name) with your installation of the libraries? What
> > Unix/Linux system do you have?
> 

> I am using Linux-Mandrake 7.2.  I have sucessfully used gd 1.8.1 to....

Thanks for that version information. On Mandrake 7.2 make sure you have
installed the development versions of the libgd, libpng, and zlib packages.
I don't have access to 7.2, but to give you some guidance these packages are
called libgd1-devel-1.8.4-3mdk.i586.rpm, libpng2-devel-1.0.9-1mdk.i586.rpm,
and zlib1-devel-1.1.3-15mdk.i586.rpm for Mandrake 8.0 (Of course you will
also need the corresponding 3 packages without -devel in their names.)

I suspect some of these 6 packages (7.2 versions!) are currently not
installed on your system, and rectification of this will solve your problem.

> Where is the output of the configure stored? 

It is just written to the screen (as stderr I believe) so just cut and paste
that into your e-mail to me if installation of the required packages doesn't
solve your problem.

> The gd.c code was compiled by make into gd.o so it must have found the
> headers. 

That's a reasonable inference, but it turns out not to be correct. If
configure doesn't find the essential headers and libraries, then it disables
png, and gd.c becomes essentially an empty file through #define's.
Compilation of this file produces a vacuous gd.o.  We may be changing this
configuration method in the next version of PLplot.

Alan W. Irwin

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 
__________________________

Linux-powered astrophysics
__________________________

Re: [Plplot-general] png plots

[M. F. <mfr...@vi...>]

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, Alan W. Irwin wrote:

> What was the output from configure?  Your problem is almost sure to be due
> to an old or non-existent header or library for one/some of libgd, libpng,
> or zlib.  --enable-png has no effect on configure if correct versions of
> these necessary libraries/headers are not installed in the usual place. What
> versions of all of those have you installed?  Where have you installed them
> on your system?  Have you included the headers (usually in a package with
> -dev or -devel in the name) with your installation of the libraries? What
> Unix/Linux system do you have?

Where is the output of the configure stored? THe config.log is empty.
I am using Linux-Mandrake 7.2. I have sucessfully used gd 1.8.1 to
draw on web pages by streaming to stdout in a "C" program.

I now wanted to add labels, vertical and horizontal axises, and tick
marks. Thats when I started looking at plplot. I thought I could
plot on png images and send the output to stdout or to a temp file.

The gd libraries are in 
/usr/lib
The gd headers are in 
/usr/include
The gd.c code was compiled by make into gd.o so it must have found the
headers. 

[root@search plplot-5.0.3]# find . -name "gd.*"
./drivers/gd.c
./tmp/shared/gd.o
./tmp/gd.c
./tmp/gd.o          

The plplot doesnt recognise the "png" keyword or so the error
says. 

[root@search plplot-5.0.3]# tmp/x01c | more
Plplot library version: 5.0.3
Requested device png not available   

How can I get it to recognise
plsdev("png"); 
correctly in my "C" code?

Thanks.

Martin

> 
> I need these details in order to help you.
> 
> Alan W. Irwin
> 
> 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 
> __________________________
> 
> Linux-powered astrophysics
> __________________________
> 
> On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, M. Frankford wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I am trying to use the plplot package add dynamic plots of ballistic
> > data on a webpage. To do this I need to write plots to png files from a
> > :"C" cgi program. I have done this using the gd library. Now I wanted to
> > add axis tick marks and the like using the plplot lib. I started by
> > modifing the x01c.c program by adding
> > 
> > /* Initialize plplot */
> >     plsdev("png");
> >    plsfnam("tst.png");
> >     plinit();
> > 
> > When I run it it returned the following error
> > 
> > [root@search plplot-5.0.3]# tmp/x01c | more
> > Plplot library version: 5.0.3
> > Requested device png not available
> > 
> > I ran configure as
> > sh configure --enable-png 
> > to make sure prior to make.
> > What else do I need to do to plot to png files. Also is it possible to
> > send the png output to stdout rather than a file?
> > 
> > Thanks.
> > 
> > Martin 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Plplot-general mailing list
> > Plp...@pl...
> > http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-general
> > 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Plplot-general mailing list
> Plp...@pl...
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-general
> 

Re: [Plplot-general] png plots

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

What was the output from configure?  Your problem is almost sure to be due
to an old or non-existent header or library for one/some of libgd, libpng,
or zlib.  --enable-png has no effect on configure if correct versions of
these necessary libraries/headers are not installed in the usual place. What
versions of all of those have you installed?  Where have you installed them
on your system?  Have you included the headers (usually in a package with
-dev or -devel in the name) with your installation of the libraries? What
Unix/Linux system do you have?

I need these details in order to help you.

Alan W. Irwin

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 
__________________________

Linux-powered astrophysics
__________________________

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, M. Frankford wrote:

> 
> I am trying to use the plplot package add dynamic plots of ballistic
> data on a webpage. To do this I need to write plots to png files from a
> :"C" cgi program. I have done this using the gd library. Now I wanted to
> add axis tick marks and the like using the plplot lib. I started by
> modifing the x01c.c program by adding
> 
> /* Initialize plplot */
>     plsdev("png");
>    plsfnam("tst.png");
>     plinit();
> 
> When I run it it returned the following error
> 
> [root@search plplot-5.0.3]# tmp/x01c | more
> Plplot library version: 5.0.3
> Requested device png not available
> 
> I ran configure as
> sh configure --enable-png 
> to make sure prior to make.
> What else do I need to do to plot to png files. Also is it possible to
> send the png output to stdout rather than a file?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Martin 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Plplot-general mailing list
> Plp...@pl...
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-general
> 

Re: [Plplot-general] png plots

[Dan L. <dle...@ip...>]

M. Frankford,

I'm quoting from Allen Irwin's description of the requirements for png in
his email of 3/29/01"
          [Plplot-general] Version 5.0.3 released':

(1) General PNG and JPEG drivers have been added which are based on the
libgd library (available for Unix/Linux/Mac/Windows).  These drivers
encourage the use of PLplot for web applications because the PNG and JPEG
formats are so favoured for the web. We classify these two drivers as
late-beta and we are sufficiently confident of them that we configure them
by default if you have the appropriate headers and libraries installed from

libgd, libpng, libjpeg, and zlib. (You need at least libgd-1.7 to obtain
good PNG images, and at least libgd-1.8 to obtain JPEG images under
PLplot.)
For more information on libgd and the additional required libraries please
visit http://www.boutell.com/gd/.

Perhaps your system doesn't have all the appropriate headers installed,
then even though you have enabled png configure will not enable it.

Dan

"M. Frankford" wrote:

> I am trying to use the plplot package add dynamic plots of ballistic
> data on a webpage. To do this I need to write plots to png files from a
> :"C" cgi program. I have done this using the gd library. Now I wanted to
> add axis tick marks and the like using the plplot lib. I started by
> modifing the x01c.c program by adding
>
> /* Initialize plplot */
>     plsdev("png");
>    plsfnam("tst.png");
>     plinit();
>
> When I run it it returned the following error
>
> [root@search plplot-5.0.3]# tmp/x01c | more
> Plplot library version: 5.0.3
> Requested device png not available
>
> I ran configure as
> sh configure --enable-png
> to make sure prior to make.
> What else do I need to do to plot to png files. Also is it possible to
> send the png output to stdout rather than a file?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Martin
>
> _______________________________________________
> Plplot-general mailing list
> Plp...@pl...
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-general

--
====================================================
Dan Leonard
Computer Specialist (Programmer)
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
(617) 496-7075

[Plplot-general] png plots

[M. F. <mfr...@vi...>]

I am trying to use the plplot package add dynamic plots of ballistic
data on a webpage. To do this I need to write plots to png files from a
:"C" cgi program. I have done this using the gd library. Now I wanted to
add axis tick marks and the like using the plplot lib. I started by
modifing the x01c.c program by adding

/* Initialize plplot */
    plsdev("png");
   plsfnam("tst.png");
    plinit();

When I run it it returned the following error

[root@search plplot-5.0.3]# tmp/x01c | more
Plplot library version: 5.0.3
Requested device png not available

I ran configure as
sh configure --enable-png 
to make sure prior to make.
What else do I need to do to plot to png files. Also is it possible to
send the png output to stdout rather than a file?

Thanks.

Martin 

[Plplot-general] Patch for plplot-5.0.3 configuration

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

The patch, plplot-5.0.3.patch1.gz, is available in the usual place
(Latest file releases at http://sourceforge.net/projects/plplot).

If you have no trouble configuring your system now, don't bother with this
patch.  Furthermore, the rpm files are unchanged because RH 6.2 is unaffected
by this problem.

However, if you are having configuration problems when building
PLplot-5.0.3, read on. We have discovered a conceptual problem in the
configuration of X (and a few other libraries) thanks to an important bug
report we received today from Valerij Pipin.  The 5.0.3 configuration
demanded the *.a static form of libraries be present even though the shared
form of library was used in subsequent linking.

It is an unnecessary burden on the user to demand they have
the static versions of X libraries (or any other library where there is a
shared counterpart) installed simply because of incomplete configuration
logic.  This patch removes that burden.

This configuration patch works well on a Debian system with the X static
libraries removed. Please let me know if there are any remaining
configuration problems on other systems.

Alan W. Irwin

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 
__________________________

Linux-powered astrophysics
__________________________

[Plplot-general] Source and binary(i386) rpm's for RedHat 6.2, PLplot 5.0.3

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

To get access to these rpm's go to the usual PLPlot file release place
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/plplot, click on "[View ALL Project Files]").

These rpm's are configured for double precision and are strictly only for
vanilla RedHat 6.2.  Thus, tcl/tk/itcl is not supported (too old a version),
octave is not supported, the png and jpeg drivers are not supported (libgd
too old), the gnome driver is not supported (libgtk+ is too old).  On the
other hand, all c, c++, f77, and python xw??.py demos work fine.  Also, the
multitude of man pages corresponding to each of our common API functions are
installed as well as the info, html, dvi, postscript, and pdf forms of our
complete documentation.  Try "man plinit" or "info plplot" right after the
install to see what is possible with automatic processing of
documentation that is based on DocBook/XML.

Note, I have only made about 10 different rpm's in my life, it has been more
than a year since I made my last one (although making rpm's is amazingly
easy if you refer to the Maximum RPM book on RedHat's site), and this spec
file has only been tested on one RedHat 6.2 machine.  Thus, take the usual
precautions with narrowly tested rpm's:

rpm --checksig package_file_name #to make sure all bits are present and correct.
rpm -qplv package_file_name #to list all files and permissions of those files that will be installed.
rpm -qp --scripts package_file_name #to list the scripts that will be executed.
rpm -qp --requires package_file_name #to list what you need on your system
                                     # (the dependencies) for a successful install.
rpm -qp --provides package_file_name #to list what this package will provide

and after installation:

rpm -V plplot

Note the spec file for these rpm's and some documentation of this spec file
are in the CVS (see the plplot/rpm/) directory.  The plan is to add
additional spec files in this CVS directory for other versions of RedHat and
other rpm-based distributions if/when a member of the core team gets access
to such distributions, and of course I will update the present spec file if
any of you find problems with it for Redhat 6.2 on i386.

Alan W. Irwin

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 
__________________________

Linux-powered astrophysics
__________________________

[Plplot-general] Version 5.0.3 released: Addenda

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

> (6) Many other small changes.  The important ones include the following: 

(k) CVS commit message: "Switched default initial font to extended (font set
1).  A default of font set 0 is a relic of a bygone era when 1M of memory
was pretty cool." Note this change will cause visible improvements to most
demos and applications.

=====
Tests
=====
> The only substantial problem that occurred in all this Linux testing was
some permissions difficulties on Suse-7.0.  The cause of those is still
being investigated (and may in fact not be a problem if you use the tarball
with already set permissions as opposed to anonymous CVS access to obtain
the source).

In fact the problem turned out to be some bad permissions left over from an
old CVS checkout.  There is no permissions problem with a fresh CVS checkout
for Suse-7.0 so that means *all* Linux systems we had access to passed all
tests with flying colors.

Alan W. Irwin

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 
__________________________

Linux-powered astrophysics
__________________________

[Plplot-general] Version 5.0.3 released

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

The PLplot core team is proud to announce the release of PLplot-5.0.3.  This
is the latest stable release and supersedes all previous versions.  To
obtain it go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/plplot and click on the
download link in the "Latest File Releases" area.

=======
Changes
=======

The core team has been active (almost 400 CVS commits) since the release of
5.0.2 seven weeks ago.  The important changes are as follows:

(1) General PNG and JPEG drivers have been added which are based on the
libgd library (available for Unix/Linux/Mac/Windows).  These drivers
encourage the use of PLplot for web applications because the PNG and JPEG
formats are so favoured for the web. We classify these two drivers as
late-beta and we are sufficiently confident of them that we configure them
by default if you have the appropriate headers and libraries installed from
libgd, libpng, libjpeg, and zlib. (You need at least libgd-1.7 to obtain
good PNG images, and at least libgd-1.8 to obtain JPEG images under PLplot.)
For more information on libgd and the additional required libraries please
visit http://www.boutell.com/gd/.

(2) The GNUSVGA driver (see plplot/sys/dos/djgpp) has been rewritten
to use DJGPP V2+ and GRX V2+. The improved driver adds: a cross hair mode; a
locate mode; double buffering; and an XOR mode to the "screen" driver, all
of which now give the driver most functions of the XWIN driver. It also
fixes up: handling of key and mouse events; colormap setting with "-bg"
switch; and now allows non-fatal/ non-volatile switching between graphics
and text mode (i.e. it no longer clobbers the computer, and now preserves the
screen). Additionally (and optionally) the DJGPP driver family now includes
support for TIFF, BMP, and JPG drivers, and the ability to do "hot key"
screen-dumps of the screen images to these formats.

(3) Octave is a mostly Matlab compatible high-level language intended for
numerical computations.  An octave front end has been available for some
years for PLplot-4.99 and has, in fact, been maintained as a Debian package.
However, this PLplot 5.0.3 release is the first attempt to integrate the
octave front end with PLplot-5.  See the README INSTALL USAGE and FGA
(frequently given answers) files in bindings/octave to find out how to use
this front end. Recently, an absolute octave newbie (AWI) was able to get
all the demos mentioned in INSTALL to work interactively for a Debian potato
system. Nevertheless, we classify this version of the front end as mid to
late beta because it has not been tested for a wide variety of environments
yet.  We would welcome reports for this front end.

(4) An experimental Perl front end is just getting underway for PLplot. This
is an exciting project because it adds an important web-scripting
environment to PLplot. Usually, documentation trails code, but in this case
we have the unusual situation where we have parsed our API documentation
chapter (written in DocBook/XML) to create Perl wrappers for the common
PLplot API. With this start we have been able to create the demonstration
Perl script x01.pl which produces identical results to the standard x01c
demo (that was written in C).  For instructions on how to get the Perl
binding to work, read bindings/perl5/README. More perl script demos are in
the works, and we welcome your participation (via the plplot-devel mailing
list, subscribe at http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=2915) in helping to
develop this front end .

(5) A GNOME-compatible driver has been written for PLplot. At this point,
the driver is being rapidly developed with many exciting interactive
capabilities being considered.  If you want to get in on the development of
this driver we urge you to subscribe to the plplot-devel mailing list (see
http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=2915).  We classify this driver as
alpha because the interactive features are not complete, but already it is
stable enough to view most of the demonstrations without problems.  If you
want to try this for yourself, use --enable-gnome when you configure PLplot,
and for any demo specify gnome as the driver.

(6) Many other small changes.  The important ones include the following:

(a) A test script.  After you have built and installed the demo programmes
(go to $prefix/share/doc/plplot/examples and execute make cdemos in the c
directory, fdemos in the f77 directory, cxxdemos in the c++ directory) then
plplot-test.sh will generate all possible postscript file results for all
demos.  (Use the --help option to explore other file driver possibilities.)
This script is an excellent way to test that you have built everything
properly on your system.

(b) A plplot-config configuration script to help you build your PLplot
applications.  Do plplot-config --help to learn how to use it.

(b') We have changed a library name.  The matrix library core name is now
libtclmatrix.  A d suffix is applied to the name (just as for all other
libraries) if the library is built with --with-double=yes configured.  If
you are using the plplot-config script to help link your applications, then
this library name change should be transparent to you.

(c) Added plshades routine to make life much easier for generating
continuously shaded plots.  See x16c for a demonstration.

(d) Small change in exclusion API for shade plots.  (If you are not
excluding regions of your shade plots this does not affect you.) For an
example of the new exclusion API for plshades see x16c.c.  The excluded
annulus now actually is smooth--a nice improvement. See plshades.c for the
changes to the plshade exclusion API.

(e) Added argument list processing for xw??.py demos.

(f) Bug fix.  Clip was not being applied to fills, now is.

(g) x10.tcl and x15.tcl added to demos.

(h) float --> PLFLT throughout the code.  This change exterminates much of
the single precision that was contaminating the code (with consequent large
roundoff errors that differed from machine to machine) when
--with-double=yes is configured.  Comparison of 32-bit and 64-bit results
for x??c now indicates identical postscript files except for date (of
course) and the x05c and x16c examples (which still must have some
single-precision contaminating them somewhere.) Other demos still need to be
checked for single-precision contamination in addition to the fundamental
x??c examples.

(i) Package relocatability put in.  This is essential for building debs and
rpm's.

(j) Assorted documentation improvements including adding a Chapter entitled
"Notes for each Operating System that We Support".  So far only filled with
somewhat sparse information on Unix/Linux.  If you want to contribute some
documentation for other platforms, feel free to send the material to AWI,
and he will include it.

======================
Warning for the future
======================

A nice dynamically loaded drivers capability has been developed on a CVS
branch, and it will soon go into the main branch at HEAD for final
stabilisation work.  It is just too difficult to support this facility for
all varieties of Unix make so we have decided to only support the GNU
version of the make command from now on (but not in the 5.0.3 which was just
released). This will have no effect on our Linux users.  It will immediately
affect our Unix CVS users and will also affect all Unix users of our next
version (which as always will be released from CVS HEAD).  So Unix users
should get GNU make.  You have been warned.

=======
Testing
=======

The djgpp changes have been tested under win-3.1.  Reports of any other
window's experience with this software are welcome.

We did extensive Linux tests. Our primary testing environment was a Debian
potato machine. On that machine we ran plplot-test.sh in both tmp and the
installed area for both the psc and png drivers. We did interactive tests
with the GNOME driver, and with the octave front end.  x01.pl was also
tested. We did additional more limited testing on 5 additional Linux
machines available to us (combinations of RH 6.2, RH 7.0, Suse-7.0, and
Debian potato on 32-bit and 64-bit architectures).  On these machines we
built all possible demonstration result files using plplot-test.sh. The only
substantial problem that occurred in all this Linux testing was some
permissions difficulties on Suse-7.0.  The cause of those is still being
investigated (and may in fact not be a problem if you use the tarball with
already set permissions as opposed to anonymous CVS access to obtain the
source).  For our final Linux tests we also successfully built the
documentation both on Debian potato and RH 6.2.

Our Unix tests were substantially more limited than our Linux tests. The
SourceForge compile farm Solaris machine is currently inaccessible, but we
got good test results for PLplot 5.0.2 on Solaris so there is a good chance
that everything will work fine on Solaris for 5.0.3.  We have also
successfully tested PLplot 5.0.3 on a Dec alpha running OSF1.  We have made
some inroads on configuration and compilation problems that occurred for
PLplot-5.0.2 for HPUX, but we don't have access to that OS so any HPUX
testing will have to be done after the fact by our users.

Reports are welcome (especially using plplot-test.sh) for all OS/hardware
combinations.  It is only through such reports (and patches that work for
you) that we can improve our cross-platform support.

Alan W. Irwin

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 
__________________________

Linux-powered astrophysics
__________________________

[Plplot-general] New plplot-devel mailing list

[Rafael L. <ra...@ic...>]

A new mailing list has been created for the PLplot project:
plp...@pl.... It is intended for technical discussions about
PLplot development.  Its traffic is expected to be much higher than that of
plplot-general, which will be used essentially for announcements and general
questions from the users.

Plplot development has been quite active these last months.  Two stable
releases (5.0.1 and 5.0.2) have come out already with a 3rd stable release 
(5.0.3) scheduled for late this week which will include many new features
such as new PNG/JPEG and Gnome/Gtk drivers as well as an Octave binding and
an experimental Perl binding.  After 5.0.3 is released from CVS HEAD, a
new dynamic driver system will be merged into CVS HEAD for final
stabilization work, and many other changes are also being considered.

Because of this greatly increased activity we have decided to create the
plplot-devel list for discussion of PLplot development. This is the list to
subscribe to if you want to get in on the PLplot action!

To subscribe to plplot-devel, visit:

    http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
    
-- 
Rafael Laboissiere & Alan W. Irwin

[Plplot-general] Debian packages for PLplot 5.0.2 available

[Rafael L. <ra...@ic...>]

Debian packages for the latest stable release of PLplot (5.0.2) are
available.

The packages work for the Debian "potato" distribution (2.2).  They are
available in both the Debian unstable repository and the apt-getable
location in the PLplot web site. 

To upgrade your packages, just add the following lines to your
/etc/apt/sources.list:
                      
    deb http://plplot.sourceforge.net/resources/debian ./
    deb-src http://plplot.sourceforge.net/resources/debian ./

then run "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" (or "apt-get dist-upgrade"
if you are upgrading from the 4.99j packages).

There are many improvements from version 5.0.1 to 5.0.2, see the
announcement at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/plplot. The plplot-doc
package contains the full documentation that is now managed with DocBook.
You will find there the PLplot manual in the following formats: html, pdf,
ps, and info.  The html on-line manual is registered with doc-base, so you
can easily access it by pointing your browser at http://localhost/dc
(supposing that doc-central is installed) and going to section Apps/Math.

Also, the plplot-dev package contains man pages for all the PLplot functions
in the public API.

As usual, report any bugs using the Debian BTS (Bug Tracking System,
http://bugs.debian.org), the more convinient way beeing through the command
reportbug (available in the Debian package with the same name).

Debianly yours,

-- 
Rafael Laboissiere <ra...@de...>

Re: [Plplot-general] configure file is gone from cvs

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

Alan W. Irwin writes:
 > If you are using cvs to get access to our latest stuff, then you must
 > generate configure using autoconf (version 2.1.3 works well for me). Here is
 > the simple cookbook for doing this.
 > 
 > cd plplot/cf
 > autoconf
 > mv configure ..
 > cd ..
 > ./configure .....

There's also a simpler way:

cd plplot
make configure
./configure ....

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

[Plplot-general] configure file is gone from cvs

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

Although a configure file that is consistent with the files in cf will be
part of tarball releases, we have decided not to include it under CVS
control because it is a file that is easily generated from our other
CVS files.

If you are using cvs to get access to our latest stuff, then you must
generate configure using autoconf (version 2.1.3 works well for me). Here is
the simple cookbook for doing this.

cd plplot/cf
autoconf
mv configure ..
cd ..
./configure .....

We consider autoconf to be part of the normal development environment
required if you want to follow PLplot changes closely using anonymous cvs
access. If you don't want to download and install autoconf for yourself,
then we suggest you wait for the next tarball release to get a snapshot
of all the neat stuff we are doing on cvs.

We have been working quite hard to improve our configuration so if you use
an old configure file instead of one generated consistently by autoconf, we
guarantee you will get into trouble...;-)

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 
__________________________

Linux-powered astrophysics
__________________________

[Plplot-general] Welcome new core team members

[Geoffrey F. <fu...@ac...>]

I am pleased to announce the addition of two new members to the
PLplot core team:
       Andrew Roach <ar...@ge...>
       Joao Cardoso <jca...@in...>

Both Andrew and Joao have been active with PLplot for some years, and
have made valuable contributions.  Andrew has been recently working on
improved driver support, and Joao is managing Octave coupling, as well
as having contributed numerous patches to every corner of PLplot over
the last few years.  Please join me in welcoming these new members to
the core team.

The full team now consists of:
    Alan W. Irwin
    Andrew Roach
    Geoffrey Furnish
    Joao Cardoso
    Maurice LeBrun
    Rafael Laboissiere
    Vince Darley

I would just like to take this chance to emphasize that the PLplot
project is trying to support a very open development model.  Anyone
can access the CVS repository from cvs.plplot.org, and produce patches
and post them at sourceforge, or mail them to any core team developer
they may be interacting wtih.  Core team members have the ability to
actually apply patches to the repository, and thereby play a valuable
role in facilitating the more rapid continual evolution of PLplot.
But everyone can participate at some level, and we look forward to an
increasingly active PLplot project as we press on into the new
millenium.

-- 
Geoffrey Furnish            Actel Corporation        fu...@ac...
Senior Staff Engineer      955 East Arques Ave       voice: 408-522-7528
Placement & Routing     Sunnyvale, CA   94086-4533   fax:   408-522-8041

Re: [Plplot-general] plplot-config

[Rafael L. <ra...@ic...>]

On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 08:59:09AM -0500, Dean Clamons wrote:

> There is now a file called plplot-config.in which is somehow supposed to be
> turned into plplot-config which gets installed when you do "make install".

Exactly.  I wrote it.

> I don't see how plplot-config gets made. I guess it's supposed to be made
> with autoconf, 

No.

> but I don't think this happens or should happen. I've been able to build
> plplot on my HP-UX system using only the native programs so far, but if I
> need to have autoconf this is no longer the case. How does plplot-config
> get made?

plplot-config is generated by the configure script, so you do not need
autoconf to generate it.  Here is the output of my configure run (many lines
stripped off):

    $ ./configure 
    [...]
    creating cf/plplot-config
    [...]

-- 
Rafael

[Plplot-general] plplot-config

[Dean C. <de...@qu...>]

There is now a file called plplot-config.in which is somehow supposed to be 
turned into plplot-config which gets installed when you do "make install". I 
don't see how plplot-config gets made. I guess it's supposed to be made with 
autoconf, but I don't think this happens or should happen. I've been able to 
build plplot on my HP-UX system using only the native programs so far, but if I 
need to have autoconf this is no longer the case.
How does plplot-config get made?

Dean Clamons
Code 7420
Naval Research Lab
Washington, DC 20375
202-767-2732

Re: [Plplot-general] yPlot archive corrupted

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

On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, Alan W. Irwin wrote:

> Thanks, Jason, for pointing that out.  As I recall Conrad uploaded those
> files during the sourceforge hardware reorganization.  Once I can make
> contact with him, we can hopefully get the problem sorted out.

UPDATE:  I understand from Conrad, that he has uploaded the yplot 1.0.3
tarball again to sourceforge and tested that it can be downloaded and
unpacked properly.

Alan W. Irwin

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 
__________________________

Linux-powered astrophysics
__________________________

Re: [Plplot-general] yPlot archive corrupted

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

Thanks, Jason, for pointing that out.  As I recall Conrad uploaded those
files during the sourceforge hardware reorganization.  Once I can make
contact with him, we can hopefully get the problem sorted out.

Meanwhile, use the cvs version of yplot.

I am currently working on incorporating a true portrait mode into the PLplot
core. We currently have control of the aspect ratio and orientation in
PLplot, but an aspect ratio change also affects the aspect ratio of characters
and symbols which should be invarient to such changes.

Once this work is completed, the plan for the next stable release of yplot
is to retire the yplot portrait-mode drivers (which do not work correctly
for shade plots) and use the PLplot core functionality instead.

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 
__________________________

Linux-powered astrophysics
__________________________

On Sun, 25 Feb 2001, Jason Beegan wrote:

> Apparently the yPlot tar file is damaged.  I downloaded it a few times
> from it's Sourceforge page.  I get:
> 
> 	% tar zxvf yplot-1.0.3.tar.gz 
> 	yplot-1.0.3/
> 	tar: Skipping to next file header...
> 
> 	gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--format violated
> 	tar: child returned status 1
> 	%
> 
> By the way, I added yPlot to the NetBSD Packages Collection recently,
> (http://www.netbsd.org/packages/graphics/yplot/README.html).
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jason Beegan. (jt...@ne...)
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Plplot-general mailing list
> Plp...@pl...
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-general
> 

[Plplot-general] yPlot archive corrupted

[Jason B. <jt...@ne...>]

Apparently the yPlot tar file is damaged.  I downloaded it a few times
from it's Sourceforge page.  I get:

	% tar zxvf yplot-1.0.3.tar.gz 
	yplot-1.0.3/
	tar: Skipping to next file header...

	gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--format violated
	tar: child returned status 1
	%

By the way, I added yPlot to the NetBSD Packages Collection recently,
(http://www.netbsd.org/packages/graphics/yplot/README.html).

Regards,

Jason Beegan. (jt...@ne...)

RE: [Plplot-general] Some inconsistencies in between plframe and the tcl API

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

Dean Clamons writes:
 > On Sunday, February 18, 2001 1:35 AM, Maurice LeBrun 
 > [SMTP:mj...@ga...] wrote:
 > > The color handling routines in plframe use X11 conventions rather than plplot
 > > ones, which is more appropriate for a widget.  I.e. it uses XParseColor to
 > > convert a string into its 3 rgb components.  This lets you use symbolic names
 > > or hex notation for color values.
 > >
 > That seems reasonable, but what is the calling sequence expected by plframe? 
 > For instance, the C calling sequence for plscmap1 is "plscmap1(r,g,b,ncol)". 
 > One would then expect the tcl calling sequence to be "plscmap1 r g b ncol". 
 > That is not what plframe expects. I haven't analyzed exactly what it wants, but 
 > the first parameter is supposed to be ncol.

The API is illustrated in the (unfortunately not currently working) file
plcolor.tcl.  Here are the salient bits: 

        set cmap0 "" 
        for {set i 0} {$i < $ncol0} {incr i} { 
            set cmap0 "$cmap0 $plcmap0_col($i)" 
        } 
        $plot.plwin cmd plscmap0 $ncol0 $cmap0 

for cmap0, and

        set cmap1 "" 
        for {set i 0} {$i < $ncol1} {incr i} { 
            set cmap1 \ 
                "$cmap1 $plcmap1_col($i) $plcmap1_pos($i) $plcmap1_rev($i)" 
        } 
        $plot.plwin cmd plscmap1 $ncol1 $cmap1 

for cmap1.  So, it's number of colors followed by a list.  Probably I
should've changed the command names to avoid confusion.. oh well.

I've been intending to rewrite the palette tools in itcl but haven't actually
gotten started on it yet.

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

[Plplot-general] false color patch

[Joao C. <jca...@in...>]

Hi,

I enclose a small patch that modify plotsh3d() slightly to enable false c=
olor=20
shading of surface plots. As usual, I modified x08c.c to show the new=20
functionalities. The affected files are plot3d.c, plplot.h and x08c.c.

I notice that some work was undergone to solve plotsh3d() problems. I hav=
e=20
also tried to solve them, but without success.

Jo=E3o

=00

RE: [Plplot-general] Some inconsistencies in between plframe and the tcl API

[Dean C. <de...@qu...>]

On Sunday, February 18, 2001 1:35 AM, Maurice LeBrun 
[SMTP:mj...@ga...] wrote:
> Dean Clamons writes:
>  > I've found that the routines plscmap0, plscmap1 and plscol0 all have API's
>  >
>  > defined in tclgen.c. That's fine and they seem to work, but in plframe
>  > there
>  > are also separate implementations in Cmd which seem to require different
>  > calling sequences. I'm assuming that these are left over from some 
previous
>  >
>  > incarnation. Incidentally, I've looked at the 5.0.2 source files to see if
>  > the
>  > problem still exists there. It does.
>
> The color handling routines in plframe use X11 conventions rather than plplot
> ones, which is more appropriate for a widget.  I.e. it uses XParseColor to
> convert a string into its 3 rgb components.  This lets you use symbolic names
> or hex notation for color values.
>
That seems reasonable, but what is the calling sequence expected by plframe? 
For instance, the C calling sequence for plscmap1 is "plscmap1(r,g,b,ncol)". 
One would then expect the tcl calling sequence to be "plscmap1 r g b ncol". 
That is not what plframe expects. I haven't analyzed exactly what it wants, but 
the first parameter is supposed to be ncol.

Dean Clamons
Code 7420
Naval Research Lab
Washington, DC 20375
202-767-2732