Re: Cannot draw figures in Mac OS X

[Joe Koski]

on 2/19/04 8:36 AM, Vic Norton at address@hidden wrote:

> Well, my octave and gnuplot were both installed via DarwinPorts, and
> my X11 is standard Apple fare. They certainly don't communicate on my
> system (Mac OS X, 10.2.3).
> 
> My first question remains "how get '/opt/local/bin' into the X11
> path". Apple says
> 
>   Getting X11 running on Mac OS X is easy. The installer sets up
>   your environment with your path and DISPLAY.
> 
> Well great, Apple, but, unfortunately, your path isn't the one I
> want. Isn't there some sort of '~/.xbash-profile' where I can set my
> intial path?

Your system is Jaguar (10.2) so your shell is probably tcsh ("T-Shell"). I
set my variables in a .cshrc file in my "home" directory. (Actually I have
two .cshrc files, one for fink, and one non-fink). When I open a terminal
window, .cshrc is executed. My non-fink .cshrc looks, for example, like

set path = ( /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin /usr/local/bin /usr/local/lib)
setenv F77 g77
setenv CC gcc
setenv FLIBS "-L/usr/local/lib -lg2c"
alias f77 g77
alias cc gcc
set color

this sets up a path to most of the binary and system files for Fortran
compiling. Apparently, my Apple X11-beta's xterm also picks up the .cshrc
file and executes it when I start X11.

For your system, try entering things in terminal like

alias octave /usr/local/bin/octave
alias gnuplot /usr/local/bin/gnuplot
setenv GNUTERM X11

to see if that helps your system to find and execute those applications,
which are probably installed in /usr/local/bin by darwinports (my preferred
locatation, by the way, not the /sw directory that fink uses.) Then create a
.cshrc file. I play with a new.cshrc file to get things the way I want them
before making it permanent. Unfortunately, we all have to become a bit of a
UNIX geek to use the free applications. You can build a new.cshrc in your
home directory with the OS X TextEdit application. I use the source command
in terminal to test a file like new.cshrc ("source new.cshrc") so I don't
shoot myself in the foot with a bad path command at terminal login. (You
have to do that at least once to appreciate what I'm saying. The easiest way
to recover is to login as root.) After it works, then "cp new.cshrc .cshrc"
to copy the file for use at all terminal logins.
 
You may also want to upgrade to at least OS X 10.2.6. I have 10.2.8, and I
think Apple messed up a couple of things going to 10.2.8 from 10.2.6. The
upgrade downloads are available on the Apple web site. The automatic on-line
update will take you all the way to 10.2.8.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Joe Koski




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