To install from sources: ======================== Installation instructions are found in the file INSTALL in this directory after going through this file. In a very small nutshell: - Under Unix, use configure and make - Under DOS, if you are using bash and DJGPP, you can just run config/djconfig.sh - Other platforms, copy the relevant makefile from config/ to src, cd to src and make. See config/README for what each of those files is for. Note: some of those files haven't been updated in ages, so they may no longer be usable. An important about the PDFlib Lite library: =========================================== The 'pdf' terminal driver uses an external library provided by PDFlib GmbH, Germany ( http://www.pdflib.de/ ). This library is available under two strictly separate licencing models. Depending on the environment you use gnuplot in, you may have to purchase a commercial licence for PDFlib even though gnuplot itself is free software. There's a special version of PDFlib, called ``PDFlib Lite'', which is freely redistrutable, but programs linked to that are strictly for non-commercial usage only. *You* are liable for whatever violations of this licence occur in a gnuplot binary built by you. IMPORTANT NOTE ON GIF, PNG and JPEG SUPPORT =========================================== Previous versions of gnuplot (through 3.7.1) used the gd library from http://www.boutell.com/gd/ to create GIF output. Because of patent concerns (see Note 1 below) GIF support was removed from the gd library, and hence current versions of the gd library cannot be used to make GIF images. This means that gnuplot, when linked against a current gd library, cannot produce GIF images either. On the other hand, the gd library now supports PNG and JPEG image generation. It also supports the use TrueType fonts, line widths, and other features that were not possible in the older gnuplot terminal drivers for either GIF or PNG. When you build gnuplot 4.0 you may choose between two options. Option 1: If you link against an old version of the Boutell gd library (versions 1.2 - 1.4) then you can enable the GIF terminal driver. In this case you cannot enable either PNG or JPEG support via the gd library. You can still selection the old minimalistic PNG driver by using ./configure --with-png . Option 2: If you link against gd library version 1.8 or newer then you get PNG and JPEG support. In this case you cannot enable the generation of true GIF images. For backwards compatibility with existing scripts, however, you can enable the --with-gif=png option. This will use the old GIF driver, accepting all the old 'set term gif' commands, but will actually produce a PNG image file. By default gnuplot assumes that if you have one of these newer versions of the gd library that it supports the use of TrueType fonts via the freetype library. If you need to specify where this library lives, use --with-freetype=PATH. If your local installation of libgd was not built with TrueType font support you can fall back to using generic fonts by using --with-freetype=no. Several open source programs exist that will convert PNG images to GIF images. See Note 2 below. If you need GIF images but want to use the newer, more feature-full, terminal drivers, then you may produce PNG images and convert them to GIF externally. On platforms that allow pipes in the "set output" command, you can generate and convert the images at the same time, as in this example: set terminal png medium set output '| convert png:- image.gif' Note 1 - UNISYS patent (why no more GIF images) ----------------------------------------------- The UNISYS patent covers the LZW technology which is used to create gifs. To my knowledge, only gd library version 1.3, and possibly version 1.4 are free of LZW code and should therefore be used with gnuplot. Versions 1.2 and 1.5 should not be used unless you have a license from Unisys to use LZW code or are in a country where the UNISYS patent does not apply. Note 2 - Open source programs for PNG to GIF conversion ------------------------------------------------------- ImageMagick ( www.ImageMagick.org ) This is an open source package for general image manipulation and file conversion, supported on a wide variety of platforms. For example the command "convert file.png file.gif" will convert a PNG image file to an equivalent GIF image file. Utah Raster Toolkit ( http://www.cs.utah.edu/gdc/projects/urt/ ) A general image file conversion library and associated file conversion utilities. Distributed as C source code. To convert from PNG to GIF, use the commands pngtorle -o temp.rle image.png rletogif -o image.gif temp.rle