Re: gnuplot works - and now I know why

[Dushan Mitrovich]

Thomas Treichl <address@hidden> wrote:
>Dushan Mitrovich schrieb:
>> Hi Thomas, Ben, and others,
>>
>> I finally uncovered which was the crucial file to make or break gnuplot
>> being able to plot on my Mac OS X.4.11 system.  An internet search for
>> the error message gnuplot produced when I asked for a plot turned up this
>>
>>   http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1067.html
>>
>> which answers the question 'How do I set environment for all processes
>> launched by a specific user?'.
>>
>> After creating the file '~/.MacOSX/environment.plist' containing the
>> variable 'GNUTERM' and its value 'x11', then logging out/in, gnuplot
>> opened in an X11 terminal window, and was able to plot successfully.
>> If I destroy that file, logout/in, gnuplot doesn't plot, and doesn't
>> even produce an error message.  Re-introducing the file lets gnuplot
>> again plot correctly.  All the other places where I had tried to spe-
>> cify GNUTERM and DISPLAY had not made any difference on my system, ex-
>> cept to have gnuplot produce an error message in response to a plot
>> request.
>>
>> So I guess now the question is, Why did the other approaches not work?
>> I sthere something peculiar about my system setup?  I don't know the
>> answers.  Now I'll try setting GNUTERM=aqua in that same environment.plist
>> file to see if I can get plotting thru aqua.
>>
>> - Dushan
>
> Hi Dushan,
> 
> sorry for being late - here is a short test that you can try beside any
> mailing-list (because of the size of the *tgz file).  So here is what you
> can try in order to make AquaTerm displaying something (I hope it works).
> I've attached a package containing binaries from my AquaTerm build for
> Gnuplot.app.  Save it in your /tmp directory and unpack it
> 
>    % deps.tgz is in /tmp, then in Terminal.app type
>    cd /tmp
>    tar -xzf deps.tgz
> 
> which extracts to /tmp/gnuplot-i386/... and then try to start gnuplot the
> following way
> 
>    GNUTERM=aqua /Applications/Gnuplot.app/Contents/Resources/bin/gnuplot
> 
> or
> 
>    GNUTERM=aqua DISPLAY= 
> /Applications/Gnuplot.app/Contents/Resources/bin/gnuplot
> 
> or (once again all in one line in Terminal.app)
> 
>    GNUTERM=aqua DISPLAY=:0.0
> /Applications/Gnuplot.app/Contents/Resources/bin/gnuplot
> 
> If you see a plot window then remove the gnuplot-i386 directory again
> 
>    cd /tmp
>    rm -rf gnuplot-i386
> 
> and try plotting in Gnuplot.app without these files (re-login or
> restarting of your Mac is not necessary)
> 
> Does it help?

Hi Thomas

Thank for sending the file and detailed instructions.  I finally got a
chance to try them out.  The upshot is that theye didn't have the desired
results.  Here is a copy of the Terminal session (the line beginning with
'+++' is my inserted comment):

--------------- begin Terminal session ---------------
Last login: Fri Mar 21 08:33:21 on console
Welcome to Darwin!

[~]$
=> cd /tmp

[/tmp]$
=> tar -xzf deps.tgz

[/tmp]$
=> ll
total 800
-rw-r--r--   1 dushanm  wheel         0 Mar 21 09:38 cs_cache_lock_501
-rw-r--r--   1 dushanm  dushanm  404889 Mar 22 10:48 deps.tgz
drwxr-xr-x   7 dushanm  wheel       238 Mar 22 04:05 gnuplot-i386/
-rw-------   1 dushanm  wheel      1179 Mar 20 15:23 qt_temp.WYb4cz

[/tmp]$
=> GNUTERM=aqua /Applications/Gnuplot.app/Contents/Resources/bin/gnuplot

        G N U P L O T
        Version 4.2 patchlevel 2
        last modified 31 Aug 2007
        System: Darwin 8.11.1

        Copyright (C) 1986 - 1993, 1998, 2004, 2007
        Thomas Williams, Colin Kelley and many others

        Type `help` to access the on-line reference manual.
        The gnuplot FAQ is available from http://www.gnuplot.info/faq/

        Send bug reports and suggestions to 
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot>


Terminal type set to 'aqua'
gnuplot> plot sin(x)/x
+++ no plot window appears, and no error messages
gnuplot> GNUTERM=aqua DISPLAY= 
/Applications/Gnuplot.app/Contents/Resources/bin/         undefined variable: 
aqua
                 undefined variable: aqua

gnuplot> GNUTERM=aqua DISPLAY=:0.0 
/Applications/Gnuplot.app/Contents/Resources/         undefined variable: aqua
                 undefined variable: aqua

gnuplot> quit
--------------- end Terminal session ---------------


This is the same behavior I had been seeing earlier.

I also tried another experiment.  This is a clean install of X.4.11, and
no separate install of AquaTerm was made - separate, that is, from what
is included with Gnuplot.app.  The results were also negative, as I had
learned to expect by now:

I invoked the PropertyListEditor on the file '.MacOSX/environment.plist'
and changed the value of the variable 'GNUTERM' (the only one) from 'x11'
to 'aqua'.  Then I logged out and back in, and tried to open Gnuplot.app
in /Applications.  The only thing that happened is that the gnuplot icon
appeared in the Dock, then immediately disappeared.  When I changed 'aqua'
back to 'x11' and did a logout/login, gnuplot works and plots again as be-
fore, using an X11 window.

Can your suggest of a more detailed way for us to compare our system
configurations, to figure out what the critical difference is?

- Dushan