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GNU plotutils maintenance and portability

From: Lazzarotto, Francesco
Subject: GNU plotutils maintenance and portability
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 18:24:51 +0200
Hello,
i did some maintenance and portability work on gnu plotutils package,
i bypassed a bug on the MS windows build and also
solved some compilation errors in the sources that could be useful
for the GNU/Linux builds, i am available for maintenance of the
gnu plotutils package and related software tools (see emails below)
because i use it for my job.
Hope to hear from you,
kind regards
Francesco Lazzarotto.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Lazzarotto, Francesco <francesco.lazzarotto@inaf.it>
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 at 16:27
Subject: Fwd: GNU plotutils maintenance and portability
To: <general@discussion.gnuwin32.p.re.sourceforge.net>


Hello, if someone could be interested, i compiled version 2.6
of GNU plotutils on MS windows, and bypassed a problem
i faced in creating png and gif files (i guess due to the new version of libpng), adding a command line option to save directly to file.
At the moment i found only plotutils 2.4.1 binaries for windows
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32/files/plotutils/2.4.1-4/
And is not possible to download plotutils binaries through pacman
msys2.
I contacted GNU plotutils maintainers  and developers to share my updates if ever could be useful to other users. You can read below details about the topic.
It seems to me that most of the heritage of gnuwin32 project has been took by msys2 project, if ever updated windows binaries of gnu plotutils will be produced could be included in the msys2 pacman
repositories.
Kind regards,
Francesco Lazzarotto.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Lazzarotto, Francesco <francesco.lazzarotto@inaf.it>
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 at 15:39
Subject: GNU plotutils maintenance and portability
To: <maintainers@gnu.org>
Cc: Francesco Lazzarotto <francesco.lazzarotto@inaf.it>


Hello, i have updates about the subject,
i am forwarding below a message i yet sent to gnu@gnu.org
and to the developers/maintainers of plotutils and related tools.
Hope the work i have done could help the gnu plotutils users community, i am available for the maintenance of GNU plotutils,
since i use it in my job, also in case you are planning to do a new release, following the v. 2.6 of 2009. I of course use it under the terms
of GPL sw license, i am also asking if it's ok to publish my updated version of gnu plotutils, to share with colleagues and students, open on my accounts github and/or sourceforge page.
Thanks in advance for the reply and for all you do for the software community.
Best regards,
Francesco Lazzarotto.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Francesco Lazzarotto <fralaz1971@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2020 at 16:48
Subject: GNU plotutils maintenance and portability
To: <rsm@math.arizona.edu>, <nick.tufillaro@oregonstate.edu>, <gnu@gnu.org>, <breiter@mathematik.uni-osnabrueck.de>, <cje2@york.ac.uk>, <bernhard@intevation.de>
Cc: Francesco Lazzarotto <francesco.lazzarotto@inaf.it>, <ametzler@debian.org>


Hello to everyone,
first of all, many thanks to all that have contributed to the development of
gnu plotutils, libplot and related tools built on them.
I use it for science data analysis and processing in academy jobs
(mostly space science research and tutoring in PhD courses).
I just done some maintenance work on the plotutils sources, so
i want to ask you if this can be helpful for the plotutils users community.

Details:
I faced some issues in using gnu plotutils version 2.6 (distributed in 2009)
mostly on using it on MS Windows and MacOS, i am a Linux user but
most of my colleagues and students use that proprietary closed source OS instead.
I recompiled correctly plotutils from source on MicroSoft Windows
using mingw c/c++ compiler in msys2 compatibility environment (and also cross-compiling on Linux),
but i faced errors using graph exe for plotting on png and gif terminal redirecting
stdout to file from the shell (this only in the MS Windows build).

I've also seen that there where a compilation error also on Linux
for the source file z_write.c of libplot
due to changes in the libpng API , infact new libpng version we have
png_jmpbuf() instead of (png_ptr)->jmpbuf
corrected this, i've seen there could be the need to implement
some error handling calls in case of error on the png output creation.
I don't know how have been compiled the plutitls binaries of gnu plotutils
version 2.6 on Linux, since they give error on compiling z_write.c if
you don't comment or change the calls to (png_ptr)->jmpbuf
i put the debian/ubuntu maintainer in copy also.

It is true that there is a GnuWin32 binary version 2.4.1 of plotutils
that works correctly, but for my projects i prefer always having the possibility
to compile from source, so i added a switch to the program graph
for saving png directly on file, instead of redirecting stdout on somefile.png.
In this way, even with an error on the png created on stdout , you have
the possibility to save the image plot on a file with commands like:

graph.exe -T png -o myoutfile.png somepoints.ssv
on MS win build, but can be used also on unix builds
graph -T png  -o myoutfile.png somepoints.ssv

I don't expect to build soon GNU plotutils on MS win with
Xorg support, i think it can be done compiling with mingw,
compiling Xorg libraries and using Xming but at the moment
i don't have time to do it easily.
On MS win instead is easy to plot on the postscript terminal
and then viewing with a postscript viewer, that can be
ghostscript (gswin32.exe) or okular , okular can read also from stdin,
in msys2 bash shell on win this is easy:

graph.exe -T ps somepoints.ssv | okular -

this made me think about the reason to put as default terminal the GNU metafile format,
why don't put postscript as default terminal in graph?
It's just a question to understand, perhaps there are many reasons to maintain gnu metafile
as default output terminal i don't know.
I know that one can always use -T ps and/or use plot program to
convert to postscript or any other terminal/format , but i have the feeling
that first time user and students they just want to do a simple 2D plot, so
they could find easier just to:
graph.exe  somepoints.ssv | somepsviewer -
or on unix/linux/MacOS
graph  somepoints.ssv | somepsviewer -
or something like that.
or directly with the use of stdin/stdout pipe
or temp file
graph_ps.exe  somepoints.ssv
or on unix/linux/MacOS
graph_ps  somepoints.ssv
and having the plot popped up on their screen.

for what concern the MacOS build, i have seen
one can download using brew
brew install plotutils
but the binary version that one can download is compiled
without x11 support, so even if one could use XQuartz
you are obliged to recompile plotutils with x support,
perhaps there are other repositories and ways to download
the X11 enabled binaries on Mac, i have not a Mac to test it,
i have just a i386 darwin 8.7 (corresponding to MacOSX  tiger v. 10.4) virtual machine, without XDarwin,
so i correctly recompiled plotutils 2.6 on darwin, it works perfectly, including saving png and gif plot files.
I think that i could produce some darwin binaries with x11 support by myself.
also cross-compiling on Linux with Darling compatibility environment,
since on Ubuntu 18.04 last version of Xorg sources
just build perfectly, and of course MacOS is a unix like OS.
For sure there are MacOS binaries with X11 support, but i cannot
download and test since i don't have a mac, i asked to a coligue
to do it but she resigned since seeing the default is without X,
and she didn't want to loose time to download apps that don't works
out-of-the-box, ...
i think that Apple wants users to use only Aqua based apps,
this in my opinion is a problem, because there are a lot of science related
applications that are X11 based, also some NASA apps require users to
use XQuartz on MacOS ...  I really don't have time and the possibility, nor
the interest to build applications the create graphics with Aqua ... so for me
it's again demonstration of the problems that create this kind of closed source/proprietary
environments.

At the end of all this story (sorry for being long), i just attached the version of plotutils, ascii_chart and piechart
i compiled and used recently, with very simple changes, and the save-on-file feature i added to graph program.
The attached tarballs are just downloaded from my github private repositories, i saved them on github repositories
that are private, i can share username:password urls if you want clone/cooperate or you know someone is
interested in doing it, here also the url without user:pass, if you would like to access just ask, i will send the
urls with user:pass on my github account https://github.com/FraLaz1971

I also don't know if i can put as open repositories on my account your projects, so that's why contacting you and
the gnu, for asking.

I Hope that i can help in someway the plotutils users, i expect your reply, thanks in advance.
Francesco Lazzarotto.





--
Francesco Lazzarotto, PhD.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4871-4072
INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova (OAPD)
[National Institute for Astrophysics - Astronomical Observatory of Padova]
http://www.oapd.inaf.it/index.php/en
office: +39 049 8293 519 mobile: +39 335 7126078


--
******************************************************************
*** PLEASE NOTE MY WORK EMAIL ADDRESS
*** HAS CHANGED IN francesco.lazzarotto@inaf.it
******************************************************************
Francesco Lazzarotto, PhD.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4871-4072
INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova (OAPD)
[National Institute for Astrophysics - Astronomical Observatory of Padova]
http://www.oapd.inaf.it/index.php/en
office: +39 049 8293 519 mobile: +39 335 7126078


--
******************************************************************
*** PLEASE NOTE MY WORK EMAIL ADDRESS
*** HAS CHANGED IN francesco.lazzarotto@inaf.it
******************************************************************
Francesco Lazzarotto, PhD.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4871-4072
INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova (OAPD)
[National Institute for Astrophysics - Astronomical Observatory of Padova]
http://www.oapd.inaf.it/index.php/en
office: +39 049 8293 519 mobile: +39 335 7126078


--
******************************************************************
*** PLEASE NOTE MY WORK EMAIL ADDRESS
*** HAS CHANGED IN francesco.lazzarotto@inaf.it
******************************************************************
Francesco Lazzarotto, PhD.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4871-4072
INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova (OAPD)
[National Institute for Astrophysics - Astronomical Observatory of Padova]
http://www.oapd.inaf.it/index.php/en
office: +39 049 8293 519 mobile: +39 335 7126078
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