[OS X TeX] GNUPLOT on Mac

[Peter Vamos]

At 19:46 +0100 11/9/08, Peter Vamos wrote:

>OK, I installed gnuplot-4.2.3 precisely as per
>Vic Norton's instructions at 16:20 -0400 14/8/08:

[snip]

>Unfortunately gnuplot crashes immediately after launching,

[snip]

>I don't have X11 installed, I read somewhere that AquaTerm is enough 
>so I downloaded that.Running 10.5.4 on an Intel Mac. The main reason 
>I want gnuplot is that I want to use Tikz for plotting functions,
>
>Can anyone help please?


		"The Log helps those who help themselves"
I am happy to report that I now have a functioning gnuplot.

No response on how to repair my "Octave.app for Mac OS X" install 
referred to above but I received a number of suggestions for a 
different install.

 From Google and Peter Lichtner: Fink, MacPort/DarwinPort. I decided 
against these mainly because they need their own installer and this 
may mess up my functioning path, profile etc. as we've just seen in a 
different thread.

Kai Kratt and Alain Schremmer pointed me to an `incubator' site 
offering an unofficial precompiled  but not quite up-to-date version.

Finally Jean-Claude DE SOZA told me that my current install couldn't 
work with TikZ anyway and urged me to get the real thing and compile, 
Soumya Dipta reporting both a success and failure with this and Axel 
Retif pointing out the important workaround. Thank you all.

I decided to take this last route and delete my current copy but on a 
whim decided to have a last throw with the dice with my current 
set-up, remembering the line in the error log
	dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/X11R6/lib/libXpm.4.dylib
referring to X11. So I installed X11 from the Apple install disc, 
double clicked on gnuplot and lo and behold it launched OK! Next 
checked TikZ examples needing gnuplot, all fine, then tried the demos 
for gnuplot these were showing up OK in AquaTerm, this being the 
default viewer for this install. (Well almost, the 3d plots were not 
rendered well but I think that there was a warning about this re 
AquaTerm somewhere.)

So I would definitely recommend this method and reproduce Vic 
Norton's guide but prepend steps -1 and 0 to it:

-1. If you haven't done it yet, install X11 from the system install disc
  0. Install AquaTerm from
    <http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=39915&type=1>
  1. go to <<http://octave.sourceforge.net/>http://octave.sourceforge.net/>
  2. click on the "Octave.app for Mac OS X" link
  3. download the appropriate "2008-04-26 binary of Octave 3.0.1"
  4. open the resulting DMG file
  5. open the gnuplot-4.2.3 DMG the Extras folder
  6. drop Gnuplot.app into your applications folder
  7. go to /usr/local/bin in terminal and do
  8. $ sudo ln -sf        
	"/Applications/Gnuplot.app/Contents/Resources/bin/gnuplot"

Jean-Claude please note: this _does_ work with TikZ. For those who 
don't like Terminal, you can do the symlink (steps 7. and 8.) in the 
finder by the contextual menu plug-in

	<http://seiryu.home.comcast.net/~seiryu/symboliclinker.html>

I mentioned in another thread.

Peter

PS Just noticed the buried in the Read-me is the requirement for X11, 
so I should have RTFM.
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