Re: Compiling Octave with OSX 10.7

[Liam Groener]

>> 
>> When I do start up octave, I get a warning that no graphical display was 
>> found. But plotting works fine both with gnuplot and fltk. When I go to 
>> print or save a graph with fltk, I get warnings that fig2dev, epstool, and 
>> pstoedit are not available. I don't know what these are needed for; I always 
>> print/save to pdf which works fine without them. I installed the latter two 
>> separately with MacPorts which eliminated two of the warnings. Macports 
>> doesn't have a fig2dev port, but I'm going to try to install if from source 
>> when I get a chance.
>> 
>> Ben, there are a couple of questions I have for you regarding the fltk 
>> backend. When I plot using Helvetica for either the axis or text fonts, the 
>> screen display shows a oblique font. The printed/saved graph doesn't do 
>> this, nor does gnuplot. Do you know what that is about? Also, going from 
>> either gnuplot to fltk or, particularly, the reverse, after making plots 
>> does not work very well. Do you know a work around? 
> 
> I built with the standard octave-devel port file with Sabastian's suggested 
> change. The FLTK backend is no longer active for me. I get no error, or 
> warning, when Octave starts.
> 
> octave:1> graphics_toolkit fltk
> warning: no graphical display found
> error: feval: function `__init_fltk__' not found
> error: called from:
> error:   /opt/local/share/octave/3.4.2/m/plot/graphics_toolkit.m at line 56, 
> column 5
> 
> Initially, I also obtained the errors when printing. Those can be eliminated 
> by installing the ports below. The fig2dev is part of the transfig port.
> 
>       $ sudo port install transfig epstool pstoedit

That worked, thanks

> 
> Regarding Helvetica, when I use this font, I see Courier. I assume there is 
> some font substitution happening.
> 
> When switching between backends, each figure is associated with the backend 
> that is active when it is created. In the example below, figure(1) will use 
> the gnuplot backend and figure(2) the fltk backend..
> 
>       graphics_toolkit gnuplot
>       figure(1)
>       graphics_toolkit fltk
>       figure(2)
>       surf (peaks)
>       figure(1)
>       surf (peaks)
> 
> If you want to switch all figures, you'll need to close them.
> 
> Ben

That worked too. The key is typing:
figure
after a change in graphics_toolkit.

I was doing things like:

graphics_toolkit fltk
surf(peaks)
graphics_toolkit gnuplot
surf(peaks)

and the last command just repotted the fltk plot. However, adding a figure 
command:

graphics_toolkit fltk
surf(peaks)
graphics_toolkit gnuplot
figure
surf(peaks)

made things work as I expected