Notes: Gnuplot

Building

The new make.com is based on buildvms.com from the original distribution, but does add new capabilities to it. The build can be modified by giving up to five parameters on the commandline:

Compiler-Switch ("DECC" or "VAXC" or "GNUC")
The default is to autodetect the C Compiler installed on your system. The precedence is to first check for DEC C, then GNU C and use VAX C as a fallback. If this parameter is set explicitly it will override the result of the autodetection unconditionally. For normal builds it should not be necessary to use this parameter, but it is usefull if you want to cross check source code changes.
Special makefile (Default is DESCRIP.MMS)
Make.com is checking if either MMS or MMK is installed on your system. In case it is, this parameter allows you to specify an alternate descriptionfile.
Include GIF support
If given, this parameter should contain the path to the header files and the object library of the GD library, which allows to write GIF files from Gnuplot. Elements in the parameter should be delimited by a coma, like in the following example:
```
public$root:[util.libs.gd],pubbin:libgd.olb
```
If this parameter is empty, no GIF support will be included in Gnuplot.
Include PNG support
If given, this parameter should contain the path to the header files and the object library of the PNG and Zlib libraries, which allow to write PNG files from Gnuplot. Elements in the parameter should be delimited by a coma, like in the following example:
```
public$Root:[util.libs.libpng],pubbin:libpng.olb,public$Root:[util.libs.zlib],pubbin:zlib.olb
```
If this parameter is empty, no PNG support will be included in Gnuplot.
Full build
A default build will produce the necessary parts to run Gnuplot, i.e. the image(s) and the Help-library. If additionally documentation in TeX and HTML format is desired a full build should be done, which is triggered by setting this parameter to "ALL"

Example

An example invocation of make.com, like I use it for my production builds looks like this:

$ @make "" "" public$root:[util.libs.gd],pubbin:libgd.olb -
   public$Root:[util.libs.libpng],pubbin:libpng.olb,public$Root:[util.libs.zlib],pubbin:zlib.olb -
   all

This builds Gnuplot using the default Compiler and Description file, adding GIF and PNG-support and including documentation in all supported formats.

Setup

A complete setup for Gnuplot on an Xwindows system should look like this:

Symbol gnuplot (e.g. $gnuplot :== $pubbin:gnuplot): This symbol is used to set the main Gnuplot image as a foreign command. Afterwards gnuplot can be invoked by simply typing gnuplot on the DCL prompt.
Symbol gnuplot_x11 (e.g. $gnuplot_x11 :== $pubbin:gnuplot_x11): This symbol is used by Gnuplot to activate the Xwindows display of graphs. A user almost never will invoke this image directly. Obviously this is only neccessary if your system has Xwindows support.
Logical gnuplot$help (e.g. $define gnuplot$help public$root:[gnu.gnuplot]gnuplot.hlb): This should point to the help-library created during the installation of Gnuplot. This file is used by Gnuplot to provide On-line help inside of the program.
Logical gnuterm (e.g. $define gnuterm "postscript"): The logical gnuterm contains information on the default terminal type to be used after the invocation of Gnuplot. Note that the terminal name is case-sensitive and therefore the logical might need to be quoted as in the example given above.
The default terminaltype can be changed after invocation of Gnuplot using the set term command.

Demos

Gnuplot comes with a number of interesting examples in the [.demo] subdirectory. To just get an impression what type of things can be done with Gnuplot try to type

$ gnuplot all.dem

which will run all of the demonstrations in the [.demo] directory. If you see something interesting there a look at the individual examples should give you a start.

Documentation

For Gnuplot 3.5 a pretty usefull usermanual is available at the main Gnuplot distribution site and for your convenience also here.
Similar a manual describing Gnuplot 3.6 in detail is available from the beta site, respectively here.

User Notes

Notes Entry

Comments to: Martin P.J. Zinser
Last modified: 20000822