octave's graphics interface / linux operating system

[Dieter Jurzitza]

Dear listmembers,
I am using gnuplot output very regularly within documents I produce with
latex. In order to achieve a really good quality I found it very convenient
to produce postscript output and convert this to pdf afterwards.
Moreover, the attributes of the text, additional labels / arrows / whatsoever
can be integrated in the graph.

Now, through the recent modifications in octave, the direct access to gnuplot
through octave became more difficult - don't take me wrong I do not mind.
In order to further process the graphs I use additional code to output data
into files, prepare gnuplot configuration files and call gnuplot finally with
a system command out of octave. This is managable but circumstancial.

My question is now twofold:
1.) is it possible to force octave to write all data into files rather than
piping them into gnuplot (or does this happen anyway?)?
2.) is there a way to force octave to write it's gnuplot config file into a
gnuplot compiliant config file in order to simplify further gnuplot
processing of the data (and to not be forced to do everything manually)

Thank you very much,
take care




Dieter Jurzitza

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[David Bateman-3]

Dieter Jurzitza wrote:

> Dear listmembers,
> I am using gnuplot output very regularly within documents I produce with
> latex. In order to achieve a really good quality I found it very convenient
> to produce postscript output and convert this to pdf afterwards.
> Moreover, the attributes of the text, additional labels / arrows / whatsoever
> can be integrated in the graph.
>
> Now, through the recent modifications in octave, the direct access to gnuplot
> through octave became more difficult - don't take me wrong I do not mind.
> In order to further process the graphs I use additional code to output data
> into files, prepare gnuplot configuration files and call gnuplot finally with
> a system command out of octave. This is managable but circumstancial.
>
> My question is now twofold:
> 1.) is it possible to force octave to write all data into files rather than
> piping them into gnuplot (or does this happen anyway?)?

Not really.

> 2.) is there a way to force octave to write it's gnuplot config file into a
> gnuplot compiliant config file in order to simplify further gnuplot
> processing of the data (and to not be forced to do everything manually)

I use

drawnow ("x11", "/dev/null", false, "file.gp")

that creates a file called file.gp with the raw gnuplot commands that
can be used directly with gnuplot's load command

D.

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[Francesco Potorti`-2]

>2.) is there a way to force octave to write it's gnuplot config file into a
>gnuplot compiliant config file in order to simplify further gnuplot
>processing of the data (and to not be forced to do everything manually)

This is not an answer to your question, but you may find the EPS Toolkit
useful.  It is a set of primitives that you can use to create an eps
plot.  You find it at http://www.epstk.de/, or as the octave-epstk package.

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[Etienne Grossmann-6]

  Hi all,

I was in Dieter's situation last year, and I took the same path. That is,
writing a few functions to save data and call gnuplot (code available at [1]).

  I wasn't aware of the drawnow trick, which indeed seems to offer means to
customize the output. I also see the online documentation is fairly recent,
maybe it is time for me to switch back to out-of-the-box octave plotting
functions.

  Cheers,

  Etienne

[1] http://users.isr.ist.utl.pt/~etienne/code/code.html#OctaveGnuplot
[2] http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter

On Sun, May 11, 2008 11:31, David Bateman wrote:
# Dieter Jurzitza wrote:
#> Dear listmembers,
#> I am using gnuplot output very regularly within documents I produce with
#> latex. In order to achieve a really good quality I found it very convenient
#> to produce postscript output and convert this to pdf afterwards.
#> Moreover, the attributes of the text, additional labels / arrows /
#> whatsoever
#> can be integrated in the graph.
#>
#> Now, through the recent modifications in octave, the direct access to
#> gnuplot
#> through octave became more difficult - don't take me wrong I do not mind.
#> In order to further process the graphs I use additional code to output data
#> into files, prepare gnuplot configuration files and call gnuplot finally
#> with
#> a system command out of octave. This is managable but circumstancial.
#>
#> My question is now twofold:
#> 1.) is it possible to force octave to write all data into files rather than
#> piping them into gnuplot (or does this happen anyway?)?
#
# Not really.
#
#> 2.) is there a way to force octave to write it's gnuplot config file into a
#> gnuplot compiliant config file in order to simplify further gnuplot
#> processing of the data (and to not be forced to do everything manually)
#
# I use
#
# drawnow ("x11", "/dev/null", false, "file.gp")
#
# that creates a file called file.gp with the raw gnuplot commands that
# can be used directly with gnuplot's load command
#
# D.
#
# _______________________________________________
# Help-octave mailing list
# Help-octave@...
# https://www.cae.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/help-octave
#


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[Søren Hauberg]

søn, 11 05 2008 kl. 15:53 -0700, skrev etienne@...:
> I wasn't aware of the drawnow trick

I think it should be stated (you know, just for the record), that the
'drawnow' trick David mentioned is likely to be removed in later
versions of Octave. It is mostly ment for debugging, so don't count on
it staying forever...

Søren

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[David Bateman]

Søren Hauberg wrote:

> søn, 11 05 2008 kl. 15:53 -0700, skrev etienne@...:
>  
>> I wasn't aware of the drawnow trick
>>    
>
> I think it should be stated (you know, just for the record), that the
> 'drawnow' trick David mentioned is likely to be removed in later
> versions of Octave. It is mostly ment for debugging, so don't count on
> it staying forever...
>  

I'd be against removing it. Though I don't believe that all graphics
backends need to respect the fourth argument to drawnow.. Though you're
right in that this "trick" is not documented. I suppose that to make it
official it should be documented.

D.



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[Sergei Steshenko-2]

--- David Bateman <adb014@...> wrote:

> Dieter Jurzitza wrote:
> > Dear listmembers,
> > I am using gnuplot output very regularly within documents I produce with
> > latex. In order to achieve a really good quality I found it very convenient
> > to produce postscript output and convert this to pdf afterwards.
> > Moreover, the attributes of the text, additional labels / arrows / whatsoever
> > can be integrated in the graph.
> >
> > Now, through the recent modifications in octave, the direct access to gnuplot
> > through octave became more difficult - don't take me wrong I do not mind.
> > In order to further process the graphs I use additional code to output data
> > into files, prepare gnuplot configuration files and call gnuplot finally with
> > a system command out of octave. This is managable but circumstancial.
> >
> > My question is now twofold:
> > 1.) is it possible to force octave to write all data into files rather than
> > piping them into gnuplot (or does this happen anyway?)?
>
> Not really.
>

Well, 'octave' has 'gnuplot_binary' command.

Using it one can use gnuplot impersonator which intercepts octave's STDOUT with 'gnuplot'
commands - I used to have a Perl script doing this and writing its STDIN to file, parsing it on
the fly.

Regards,
  Sergei.


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[David Bateman]

Sergei Steshenko wrote:

> --- David Bateman <adb014@...> wrote:
>
>  
>> Dieter Jurzitza wrote:
>>    
>>> Dear listmembers,
>>> I am using gnuplot output very regularly within documents I produce with
>>> latex. In order to achieve a really good quality I found it very convenient
>>> to produce postscript output and convert this to pdf afterwards.
>>> Moreover, the attributes of the text, additional labels / arrows / whatsoever
>>> can be integrated in the graph.
>>>
>>> Now, through the recent modifications in octave, the direct access to gnuplot
>>> through octave became more difficult - don't take me wrong I do not mind.
>>> In order to further process the graphs I use additional code to output data
>>> into files, prepare gnuplot configuration files and call gnuplot finally with
>>> a system command out of octave. This is managable but circumstancial.
>>>
>>> My question is now twofold:
>>> 1.) is it possible to force octave to write all data into files rather than
>>> piping them into gnuplot (or does this happen anyway?)?
>>>      
>> Not really.
>>
>>    
>
> Well, 'octave' has 'gnuplot_binary' command.
>
> Using it one can use gnuplot impersonator which intercepts octave's STDOUT with 'gnuplot'
> commands - I used to have a Perl script doing this and writing its STDIN to file, parsing it on
> the fly.
>
>  

Ok then not if you mix it with Octave's front-end plotting commands..

D.




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[stefan pofahl-2]

Hello Sergei,

this is to me a bit to cryptic, can you provide a practical
example?

Regards,

Stefan

***

2008/5/12, Sergei Steshenko <sergstesh@...>:

--- David Bateman <adb014@...> wrote:

> Dieter Jurzitza wrote:



Well, 'octave' has 'gnuplot_binary' command.

Using it one can use gnuplot impersonator which intercepts octave's STDOUT with 'gnuplot'
commands - I used to have a Perl script doing this and writing its STDIN to file, parsing it on
the fly.

Regards,
  Sergei.


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[Sergei Steshenko-2]

--- Stefan Pofahl <stefan@...> wrote:

> Hello Sergei,
>
> this is to me a bit to cryptic, can you provide a practical
> example?
>
> Regards,
>
> Stefan
>
> ***
>
> 2008/5/12, Sergei Steshenko <sergstesh@...>:
> >
> >
> > --- David Bateman <adb014@...> wrote:
> >
> > > Dieter Jurzitza wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > Well, 'octave' has 'gnuplot_binary' command.
> >
> > Using it one can use gnuplot impersonator which intercepts octave's STDOUT
> > with 'gnuplot'
> > commands - I used to have a Perl script doing this and writing its STDIN
> > to file, parsing it on
> > the fly.
> >
> > Regards,
> >   Sergei.
> >
> >
> > Applications From Scratch: http://appsfromscratch.berlios.de/
> >
> >
> >
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Well, with the attached example it will probably be even more cryptic :-) ...

The idea of the script was:

1) to store data sent to 'gnuplot' in temporary files;
2) when actual 'plot' command is encountered, to call 'gnuplot' with the temporary
files.

For this particular script to work I had to slightly change 'octave' plotting routines
to produce more easily parseable output.

This all was done in order to enable mouse zooming - the released gnuplot-4.2.3 does
not have mouse zooming woeking when input comes to it through STDIN; recent binary
snapshots have this problem resolved, so I do not need the script anymore.

Anyway, in the attached script 'main_loop' routine iterates over STDIN lines, separating
the stream into commands - see $commands_file, $_commands_file_fh and data - see
$data_file, $_data_file_fh.

The

    152           $line =~ s/^"-"/"$data_file"/;

line substitutes "-", i.e. the instruction for 'gnuplot' to accept data from STDIN
with "$data_file", i.e. the instruction for 'gnuplot' to accept data from $data_file.

The script was a hack, but it illustrates the idea of intercepting STDIN.

...

For your purposes you can probably also specify 'gnuplot' using 'gnuplot_binary' more
or less this way:

gnuplot_binary("| tee gnuplot_input.txt | /actual/path/to/gnuplot");

or just

gnuplot_binary("| tee gnuplot_input.txt | gnuplot");

- in the above 'tee' will both write everything sent to 'gnuplot' to 'gnuplot_input.txt' file and
will send to 'gnuplot' what's been sent to it by 'octave'.

Try http://linux.die.net/man/1/tee to read 'tee' manpage.

Regards,
  Sergei.

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[Dieter Jurzitza]

Dear listmembers,
first of all, many thanks for all the inputs I received. And, David, many
thanks for the suggested function. Personally, I vote strongly against
removing this function from octave, too. It would throw everyone back
singnificantly who is working closely with gnuplot. As long as there is no
straightforward way to create "publication-quality" graphs out of octave and
as long as I am forced to fiddle around with gnuplot parameters and commands
I (probably) have a different approach from others.

And, to stop any discussion from rising, I do not think there is a way to emit
a command like (maybe I just didn't find ...)

set terminal postscript enhanced color solid "Arial,14"

or a command like

plot function(x) title {/Symbol W} w l lw 2

from within octave without manually writing a function that writes those
commands into a file. And, again, _I do not_ want to request an integration
of things like this into octave.

Apart from "niceness" of interfaces to provide a matlab compatibilty (this is  
a personal guess, I never used mathlab so I do not know much about it) this
triggers me into learning two sets of commands, the gnuplot commands I am
very familiar with and the octave commands that differ but provide only a
part of the function set of gnuplot at the very end.

And in my opinion it is a pity - and a waste of time - to force capable
programers to implement one function translator after the other to only
mirror a command set - more or less.

So, from an (personal!) user prospective I prefer functionality over
programming niceness - as long as the tools provided are not capable to do
the entire job, which is not to be expected IMHO - see above.

I do not want to raise a discussion on whether the "raw" gnuplot commands
should be kept alive. A decision has been made, I live with it. The only tiny
(well, maybe not _that_ tiny ...) little wish I would appreciate to rise
would be a function called gnuplotout (or whatever name is apropriate) that
outputs both the configuration file and the data to be plotted so the further
work is not that effortsome. Just my 2 cents here.

And again, thanks to everybody - this tells me that more people than me are
struggling to get smooth graphs for their publications / presentations /
daily work.

Take care,




Dieter

P.S. and thank you for doing all the work on octave, I guess I missed
mentioning by the way .....

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if you really want to see the pictures above - use some font
with constant spacing like courier! :-)
-----------------------------------------------------------Am Montag, 12. Mai
2008 10:04:50 schrieb David Bateman:
> Søren Hauberg wrote:
> > søn, 11 05 2008 kl. 15:53 -0700, skrev etienne@...:
*******

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[Sergei Steshenko-2]

--- Dieter Jurzitza <dieter.jurzitza@...> wrote:

> Dear listmembers,
> first of all, many thanks for all the inputs I received. And, David, many
> thanks for the suggested function. Personally, I vote strongly against
> removing this function from octave, too. It would throw everyone back
> singnificantly who is working closely with gnuplot. As long as there is no
> straightforward way to create "publication-quality" graphs out of octave and
> as long as I am forced to fiddle around with gnuplot parameters and commands
> I (probably) have a different approach from others.
>
> And, to stop any discussion from rising, I do not think there is a way to emit
> a command like (maybe I just didn't find ...)
>
> set terminal postscript enhanced color solid "Arial,14"
>
> or a command like
>

> The only tiny
> (well, maybe not _that_ tiny ...) little wish I would appreciate to rise
> would be a function called gnuplotout (or whatever name is apropriate) that
> outputs both the configuration file and the data to be plotted so the further
> work is not that effortsome. Just my 2 cents here.

What about

gnuplot_binary("| tee gnuplot_input.txt | gnuplot");

- "gnuplot_input.txt" above is what is sent to 'gnuplot'.

Regards,
  Sergei.



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[John W. Eaton]

On 13-May-2008, Dieter Jurzitza wrote:

| I do not want to raise a discussion on whether the "raw" gnuplot commands
| should be kept alive. A decision has been made, I live with it. The only tiny
| (well, maybe not _that_ tiny ...) little wish I would appreciate to rise
| would be a function called gnuplotout (or whatever name is apropriate) that
| outputs both the configuration file and the data to be plotted so the further
| work is not that effortsome. Just my 2 cents here.

This assumes that gnuplot is even used for generating plots.  It's
likely that at some time in the reasonably near future this will no
longer be true for Octave, or at least that the default (and probably
more complete and actively maintained) plotting backend will not be
based on gnuplot.

| And again, thanks to everybody - this tells me that more people than me are
| struggling to get smooth graphs for their publications / presentations /
| daily work.

If you prefer using gnuplot commands, then I suggest splitting
computation from plotting, and writing out your data to files, then
using gnuplot separately to generate the plots.

jwe
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[Søren Hauberg]

Quoting "John W. Eaton" <jwe@...>:
> If you prefer using gnuplot commands, then I suggest splitting
> computation from plotting, and writing out your data to files, then
> using gnuplot separately to generate the plots.

It seems to me that a lot of people would like to use gnuplot more  
directly. So, I guess it would be nice if somebody stepped up and  
created an interface to gnuplot. Something that would allow you to  
visualize your data from Octave using a syntax closer to the one used  
in gnuplot. This should of course be a separate package. Personally,  
I'm satisfied with the quality of the current output (it might not be  
"pulication quality" but publishers don't complain...), so I'm not  
going to spend time on this...

Søren


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[Francesco Potorti`-2]

>It seems to me that a lot of people would like to use gnuplot more  
>directly.

Maybe the issue is that when one begins to write a program, the builtin
plotting commands are very quick and handy, that's why one wants to use
them.  When the program nears the production stage, it would be nice to
keep using the same commands with small and incremental variations to
get closer to professional quality.

The trick of sending the gnuplot commands to a file for further refining
satisfies this need.

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[Dieter Jurzitza]

Hi Sergei,
did you test what you suggested? I get tons of messages about broken pipes -
nothing that could be used, seriously.
Thanks for the hint, anyway,
take care




Dieter

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  ||  ||         _| _|    _| _|

if you really want to see the pictures above - use some font
with constant spacing like courier! :-)
-----------------------------------------------------------Am Mittwoch, 14.
Mai 2008 03:03:20 schrieb Sergei Steshenko:
***********
> What about
>
> gnuplot_binary("| tee gnuplot_input.txt | gnuplot");
>
> - "gnuplot_input.txt" above is what is sent to 'gnuplot'.
*******

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