On 3/1/07, Aditya Mahajan wrote:

On Wed, 28 Feb 2007, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

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Hello,

I've put the gnuplot binary for windows on http://modules.contextgarden.net/gnuplot-win, just in case that anyone is interested (Firefox has problems displaying that page, but I didn't figure out whether the problem lies in the garden, firefox or on my computer).

Some functionality and documentation is still missing, but the interface should be stable now. If anyone would like to suggest what the default settings for some options should be, feel free to comment. I'm not sure if the current settings are all sensinble and there might still be time to change some.

I downloaded the gnuplot and a couple of tests. Few comments:

m-gnuplot is found before t-gnuplot on my system. I know that m-gnuplot has been removed from the core packages, but I (and I guess most people) update using ctxtools --update, which will not delete the existing m-gnuplot. So, to ensure that the new module is loaded, you must use

\usemodule[t][gnuplot]

But that is more ugly. I prefer to say explicitely to delete m-gnuplot.tex rather than having to keep using [t] for ages. m-gnuplot is/was a great starting point, but now obsolete anyway.

I do not understand the need to create a batch file in Windows. I understand the naming mess in gnuplot, but can't you follow the same strategy as the bib module. That is allow the user to name the command, something like

\setupgnuplot[program=wgnuplot|pgnuplot|whatever]

Thanks for the suggestion. The problem under windows is that gnuplot usually doesn't reside in PATH anyway (in contrast to unix). Adding such a setting in file would mean incompatibility when compiling the same file on linux, but of course one could add \setupgnuplot[program=wgnuplot] to cont-usr.tex. I just thought that creating a batch file would be less problematic than hardcoding the path in the module. But such an option can always be added.

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Gnuplot 4.2 will probably be released very soon. The context terminal might have chances to be included in the "patchset 1", but the developers are reluctant to include it without any feedback from other users.

Please also include a demo file with the gnuplot module. If I were seriously considering using gnuplot, a demo file will help a lot. That will also allow you to find the syntax mistake in the examples at the end. You should have

\startGNUPLOTscript[exp] instead of \startGNUPLOTscript{exp} (square brackets, instead of braces)

Braces were used at the beginning (as in \startuseMPgraphic{name}), but since \useGNUPLOTgraphic[name][1,3][width=4cm] needed optional parameters, it was a bit inconsistent to have braces in one place and brackets on the other. Both should work. Well, at least they were supposed to work (or at least "I think that I remember them working"). Apparently it doesn't. I spent quite some time trying to support both brackets and braces, but I didn't manage to make \useGNUPLOTgraphic{name} work. \startGNUPLOTsript{name} doesn't complain, but doesn't seem to work either. Never mind, it's not that important. I'll change the demos, but I also need to improve them and write some general documentation. Thanks a lot for suggestions & comments, Mojca