Subject: [LON-CAPA-dev] gnuplot and jpeg

From: Scott Harrison <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 15:43:38 -0400

Dear Anybody Who is Working with Gnuplot:

So... for a non-LON-CAPA project I have been
gnuplot generating JPEGs and/or PNGs (the user
can choose).

So guess what, RedHat's latest gnuplot RPM for RH7.2

DOES NOT SUPPORT JPEG.

Sigh...

Regards,
Scott

-- 
Scott Harrison -- Graduate Student
Microbiology and Molecular Genetics
Mich. State. Univ., East Lansing, MI
[email-masked], 517-353-0998

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From: Gerd Kortemeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 15:50:11 -0400

The newest beta release of Gnuplot only supports ASCII-art output.

Scott Harrison wrote:

> _______________________________________________
> LON-CAPA-dev mailing list
> [email-masked]
> http://mail.lon-capa.org/mailman/listinfo/lon-capa-dev

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From: "Matthew Brian Hall" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 16:03:48 -0400 (EDT)

It has been suggested that we try out 'grace'.
http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/

Not that this is the best time for you to be learning a new system, but anyone
who would like to is encouraged to look into it and talk to me about reworking
the plotting interface to use it instead of or as well as gnuplot.  Grace does
not do GIF images, but it does (claim to) handle JPEGs.

Matthew

> The newest beta

--
------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthew Hall           LON-CAPA developer         [email-masked]
123 North Kedzie Hall                    Michigan State University
------------------------------------------------------------------

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From: Martin Siegert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 13:11:17 -0700

I just mailed Scott about this:
for everybody who wants to try out grace and is too lazy to compile from
source (which is not completely trivial):
I compile it for RH 7.2 a while ago. The RPMS are here:

http://www.sfu.ca/~siegert/grace.html

You need the netcdf RPM as well. You probably don't need the pdflib RPM.

Martin

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From: Scott Harrison <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 16:33:27 -0400

I have for a long time expressed my dislike of gnuplot.
I have, in the past, suggested, http://gri.sourceforge.net/.

...however initial output is postscript for gri.

Grace seems cool...

Regards,
Scott

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From: Gerd Kortemeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 16:38:53 -0400

Now, is Grace going to be hit by the same licensing problems that Gnuplot does, once
it might get too popular? Basically, they are probably violating the same patents,
only that for something currently as small as Grace nobody cares just yet.

What is the support situation nd buggyness of Grace?

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From: Scott Harrison <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 16:50:41 -0400

(I did it!  I started a really long thread!  YEAH!)

JPEG should be patent-free.. I thought.
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/JPEG/

Am I wrong?

Regards,
Scott

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From: Guy Albertelli II <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 16:51:46 -0400 (EDT)

Hi,

> Now, is Grace going to be hit by the same licensing problems that
> Gnuplot does, once it might get too popular?

Unlikely, JPEG has no patent issues surrounding it. I can only wonder
why Red Hat removed the support for it.

It seems rather odd.

> Basically, they are probably violating the same patents,

Grace doesn't do GIF the only format plagued by patent issues.

> > > http://www.sfu.ca/~siegert/grace.html

And if we plan on having people install outside RPMS then why not roll
our own gnuplot rpm with gif and jpeg support?

I thought the plan was to move towards a common base, and Grace I
think is even more uncommon then a gnuplot with jpeg or gif support.

-- 
[email-masked]        BM: n^20 t20 z20 qS 
Guy Albertelli -7-9-4-  O-
    I honor my personality flaws, for without them I would have no
    personality at all.

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From: Guy Albertelli II <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 16:57:08 -0400 (EDT)

Hi,

> > > > > > > So guess what, RedHat's latest gnuplot RPM for RH7.2

And according to the gnuplot developers:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&th=559b13d0c10c916e&rnum=1

Never should have supported it. 

-- 
[email-masked]        BM: n^20 t20 z20 qS 
Guy Albertelli -7-9-4-  O-
    Well I best be going . . . crack don't smoke itself you know 
                                           -C.Chambers

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From: Gerd Kortemeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 17:30:39 -0400

> think is even more uncommon then a gnuplot with jpeg or gif support.

Okay, somebody convince me that Guy is wrong.

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From: Martin Siegert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 15:43:07 -0700

> What is the support situation nd buggyness of Grace?

I have used grace (formerly xmgr) for years - it is well supported.
The RPMs that I built are recompiles from Mandrake src rpms.
I think "nobody" should be translated to RedHat - otherwise I don't see
a support problem.

grace generates JPEG, PNG, EPS, PNM, PDF (and a few more) output.

Cheers,
Martin