How do I decide whether to use gnuplot-nox or gnuplot-qt or gnuplot-x11

[Sunshine]

I need to graph something, and a friend suggested gnuplot.

Typing "$ gnuplot" at the command line on Kubuntu 14.04 KDE,
I get the suggestion:

The program 'gnuplot' can be found in the following packages:
* gnuplot-nox
* gnuplot-qt
* gnuplot-x11
Try: sudo apt-get install <selected package>

I can install all three, but, what bothers me is HOW am I supposed
to make an *intelligent* decision as to which one is appropriate
for Kubuntu 14.04 KDE desktop?

What would I look for to understand *which* gnuplot is appropriate?

[Wildman]

I believe the package you want to install is gnuplot. Any other
gnuplot-* packages that are needed will be also installed. What
do you get if you enter this in a terminal?

apt-get policy gnuplot

--
<Wildman> GNU/Linux user #557453
The cow died so I don't need your bull!

[John Hasler]

Sunshine writes:
> What would I look for to understand *which* gnuplot is appropriate?

"apt-cache show <package-name>" will tell you about the package.

In this case you want gnuplot-x11.
--
John Hasler
jha...@newsguy.com
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA

[Sunshine]

On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 19:03:04 -0500, Wildman wrote:

> What do you get if you enter this in a terminal?
>
> apt-get policy gnuplot

When I run the suggested command above, I get an error:
$ apt-get policy gnuplot
E: Invalid operation policy

$ sudo apt-get policy gnuplot
E: Invalid operation policy

BTW, I arbitrarily installed gnuplot-x11, but I was just guessing.
$ sudo apt-get install gnuplot-x11

[Sunshine]

On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 19:06:18 -0500, John Hasler wrote:

> "apt-cache show <package-name>" will tell you about the package.
>
> In this case you want gnuplot-x11.

I actually arbitrarily installed gnuplot-x11; but how did you know
that was the correct choice?

When I run the apt-cache, nothing tells me which of the three is the
right one to install. Did I miss something in the list below?

$ apt-cache show gnuplot
Package: gnuplot
Priority: optional
Section: universe/math
Installed-Size: 43
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-dev...@lists.ubuntu.com>
Original-Maintainer: Debian Science Team <debian-scienc...@lists.alioth.debian.org>
Architecture: all
Version: 4.6.4-2
Depends: gnuplot-nox | gnuplot-x11 | gnuplot-qt
Suggests: feedgnuplot, gnuplot-doc, libgnuplot-iostream-dev, python-gnuplot
Filename: pool/universe/g/gnuplot/gnuplot_4.6.4-2_all.deb
Size: 4076
MD5sum: 831cf15d42f5279972e9e596719edadb
SHA1: dd082291608d79e9620097a973b8a06dcaff1871
SHA256: cfeab4676af656e60a49e94159ea3808fd93514b026df464a243303f3c19762b
Description-en: Command-line driven interactive plotting program
Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven interactive data and function
plotting utility that supports lots of output formats, including drivers
for many printers, (La)TeX, (x)fig, Postscript, and so on. The X11-output
is packaged in gnuplot-x11.
.
Data files and self-defined functions can be manipulated by the internal
C-like language. Can perform smoothing, spline-fitting, or nonlinear fits,
and can work with complex numbers.
.
This package is for transition and to install a full-featured gnuplot
supporting the X11-output.
Description-md5: b2ac0aa5223bfd496fa5deeb90e3125b
Homepage: http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Origin: Ubuntu
Supported: 9m

[Cybe R. Wizard]

On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 19:20:00 -0500
Sunshine <suns...@my.antispam.invalid> wrote:

> how did you know
> that was the correct choice?

nox = no X
qt - KDE's native toolkit
X11 - pretty much the rest

Cybe R. Wizard
--
Nice computers don't go down.
Larry Niven, Steven Barnes
"The Barsoom Project"

[Jonathan N. Little]

Sunshine wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 19:03:04 -0500, Wildman wrote:
>
>> What do you get if you enter this in a terminal?
>>
>> apt-get policy gnuplot

Because it is
apt-cache policy gnuplot

or for searching
apt-cache search gnuplot

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

[John Hasler]

Sunshine writes:
> I actually arbitrarily installed gnuplot-x11; but how did you know
> that was the correct choice?

I use it.

> When I run the apt-cache, nothing tells me which of the three is the
> right one to install. Did I miss something in the list below?

That shows you that "apt-get install gnuplot" replaces all three. Do so
and be happy. You'll also want gnuplot-doc.

[Wildman]

On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 20:51:05 -0400
"Jonathan N. Little" <lws...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sunshine wrote:
> > On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 19:03:04 -0500, Wildman wrote:
> >
> >> What do you get if you enter this in a terminal?
> >>
> >> apt-get policy gnuplot
>
> Because it is
> apt-cache policy gnuplot

Yep, that's right. Sorry Sunshine. I guess I had a brain fart.

[Eef Hartman]

In alt.os.linux Sunshine <suns...@my.antispam.invalid> wrote:
> The program 'gnuplot' can be found in the following packages:
> * gnuplot-nox

no-X, commandline usage only (i.e. to convert graphic files).

> * gnuplot-qt

When you're using KDE as your desktop and want to integrate gnuplot
with that environment, qt is the basic library for KDE-like
applications (like gtk is for gnome/xfce/unity).

> * gnuplot-x11

When you DO want X11 (graphics) support in gnuplot.
Probably a dependency of gnuplot-qt

[Chris Ahlstrom]

Wildman wrote this copyrighted missive and expects royalties:

> Sorry Sunshine. I guess I had a brain fart.

Sounds like a line from a movie :-)

--
Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?

[Sunshine]

On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 20:51:05 -0400, Jonathan N. Little wrote:

> Because it is
> apt-cache policy gnuplot
>
> or for searching
> apt-cache search gnuplot

I don't understand how either one answers the question of which gnuplot
to install.

$ apt-cache policy gnuplot
gnuplot:
Installed: (none)
Candidate: 4.6.4-2
Version table:
4.6.4-2 0
500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/universe amd64 Packages

$ apt-cache search gnuplot
bonnie++ - Hard drive benchmark suite
texlive-latex-extra - TeX Live: LaTeX additional packages
texlive-pictures - TeX Live: Graphics, pictures, diagrams
devscripts - scripts to make the life of a Debian Package maintainer easier
amanda-client - Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (Client)
amanda-server - Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (Server)
cdck - tool for verifying the quality of written CDs/DVDs
chiark-scripts - chiark system administration scripts
circos - plotter for visualizing data
collectl - Utility to collect Linux performance data
ctioga2 - polymorphic plotting program
feedgnuplot - Pipe-oriented frontend to Gnuplot
gausssum - parse and display Gaussian, GAMESS, and etc's output
gnuplot - Command-line driven interactive plotting program
gnuplot-doc - Command-line driven interactive plotting program. Doc-package
gnuplot-mode - Yet another Gnuplot mode for Emacs
gnuplot-nox - Command-line driven interactive plotting program. No-X package
gnuplot-qt - Command-line driven interactive plotting program. QT-package
gnuplot-x11 - Command-line driven interactive plotting program. X-package
hershey-font-gnuplot - Hershey vector fonts renderer for gnuplot
jed-extra - collection of useful Jed modes and utilities
kayali - A Qt-based Computer Algebra System
libchart-gnuplot-perl - module for generating two- and three-dimensional plots
libfinance-bank-ie-permanenttsb-perl - perl interface to the PermanentTSB Open24 homebanking
libgnuplot-iostream-dev - C++ programming interface for gnuplot. Headers
libgnuplot-iostream-doc - C++ programming interface for gnuplot. Docs and examples
libgnuplot-ocaml-dev - OCaml interface to the gnuplot utility
libgraph-writer-dsm-perl - Perl module to draw Graph object as a DSM matrix
libgraphics-gnuplotif-perl - dynamic Perl interface to gnuplot
libploticus0 - script driven business graphics library
libploticus0-dev - Development files for the ploticus library
mathomatic - portable Computer Algebra System (CAS)
plotdrop - A minimal GNOME frontend to GNUPlot
ploticus - script driven business graphics package
probcons-extra - Extra programs from the probcons package
pstoedit - PostScript and PDF files to editable vector graphics converter
python-gnuplot - Python interface to the gnuplot plotting program
python-scitools - Python library for scientific computing
rheolef - efficient Finite Element environment
rlplot - GUI application for generating publication quality graphs
ruby-gnuplot - Ruby library to interact with gnuplot
scidavis - application for scientific data analysis and visualization
stda - simple tools for data analysis (stda)
tcptrace - Tool for analyzing tcpdump output

[Sunshine]

On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 19:48:40 -0500, John Hasler wrote:

> That shows you that "apt-get install gnuplot" replaces all three. Do so
> and be happy. You'll also want gnuplot-doc.

Oh. OK. It doesn't "tell" me that, but I see all three in
the output of the command ...

$ apt-cache search gnuplot
......

gnuplot - Command-line driven interactive plotting program
gnuplot-doc - Command-line driven interactive plotting program. Doc-package
gnuplot-mode - Yet another Gnuplot mode for Emacs
gnuplot-nox - Command-line driven interactive plotting program. No-X package
gnuplot-qt - Command-line driven interactive plotting program. QT-package
gnuplot-x11 - Command-line driven interactive plotting program. X-package

......

[Mike Easter]

Sunshine wrote:
> What would I look for to understand*which* gnuplot is appropriate?

I don't know anything about gnuplot, but I can learn a lot by using it
as a search term in synaptic. There I find that it is a command driven
utility and that its x11 output is in -x11 while the QT is in -qt and
the -nox is for working without an x server; and that all 3 of those are
dependencies. Also that -doc contains additional docs and that there
are about 3 dozen other synaptic hits which might be useful to one's use
of gnuplot, such as plotdrop.


--
Mike Easter

[Paul]

After all of the input offered so far,
it doesn't look like anything would have helped you
figure it out. (It's been probably 20 years since
I've touched this stuff, and it's a complete blank now.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnuplot

Initial release 1986 <--- 29 year old software!!!

"gnuplot is a command-line program that can generate
two- and three-dimensional plots of functions, data, and data fits."

"The gnuplot core code is programmed in C. Modular subsystems for
output via Qt, wxWidgets, and LaTeX/TikZ/ConTeXt are written in
C++ and lua."

"Newer gnuplot modules (e.g. Qt, wxWidgets, and cairo drivers)
have been contributed under dual-licensing terms"

So the program was inherently command line, when it
first came out. The X11 version allowed you to view
the results, without printing them. I expect the
Qt version (which would be later), would be like the
X11 version, but with different decorations.

This is one of those situations, where you would
have had to have been born before the software
start date. Gnuplot was around even when I was using
the old Unix boxes.

It's from a non-WYSIWYG era. Back then, I was using
a word processor at work, which used formatting
commands like ".fo", and the only way to verify
exactly what some output looked like, was to print it.
You can see this is the same sort of idea.

set title "Some math functions"
set xrange [-10:10]
set yrange [-2:2]
set zeroaxis
plot (x/4)**2, sin(x), 1/x

So I would not expect the interface to do this
graphically for you (interactive design). Unless
it's been completely rewritten. This approach
is something only a scientist or grad student
would appreciate :-) The "Excel generation"
are not going to be impressed at all :-)

It would be like preparing printer output,
by writing a PostScript program :-) Example
here, if you're interested in the dark arts.

http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.ps
http://ecee.colorado.edu/~kuester/smith/smith.pdf

You enjoy the smith.ps in a text editor.
Then view the PDF to see why they did it.
It saves the $0.25 cents a sheet for graph paper :-)
Smith chart paper could only be bought in the
student book store, and was very expensive.
Making your own, dropped the price to $0.05 a sheet.

Paul

[Jonathan N. Little]

Sunshine wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 20:51:05 -0400, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
>
>> Because it is
>> apt-cache policy gnuplot
>>
>> or for searching
>> apt-cache search gnuplot
>
> I don't understand how either one answers the question of which gnuplot
> to install.

Depends on how *you* want to use it. You say you are using KDE which
uses the QT toolkit so

>
> $ apt-cache policy gnuplot
> gnuplot:
> Installed: (none)
> Candidate: 4.6.4-2
> Version table:
> 4.6.4-2 0
> 500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/universe amd64 Packages
>
> $ apt-cache search gnuplot

<snip>

> gnuplot - Command-line driven interactive plotting program
> gnuplot-doc - Command-line driven interactive plotting program. Doc-package
> gnuplot-mode - Yet another Gnuplot mode for Emacs
> gnuplot-nox - Command-line driven interactive plotting program. No-X package
> gnuplot-qt - Command-line driven interactive plotting program. QT-package

^^^^^^^^^^^^
You might want to install this one.

> gnuplot-x11 - Command-line driven interactive plotting program. X-package

[Sunshine]

On Tue, 17 Mar 2015 09:23:03 -0400, Jonathan N. Little wrote:

>> gnuplot-qt - Command-line driven interactive plotting program. QT-package
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^
> You might want to install this one.

I installed this second one.

Like having two watches, I'm not sure what time it is now.
They both look the same.

$ gnuplot
gnuplot> x=5
gnuplot> plot sin(x)
gnuplot> exit

[Sunshine]

On Tue, 17 Mar 2015 09:06:11 -0400, Paul wrote:

> set title "Some math functions"
> set xrange [-10:10]
> set yrange [-2:2]
> set zeroaxis
> plot (x/4)**2, sin(x), 1/x

I just tried this:
$ gnuplot
gnuplot> set title "Some math functions"
gnuplot> set xrange [-10:10]
gnuplot> set yrange [-2:2]
gnuplot> set zeroaxis
gnuplot> plot (x/4)**2, sin(x), 1/x
gnuplot> exit

And this is the result:
http://i61.tinypic.com/2ebvjv6.jpg

[Paul]

That kinda looks like Qt decorations ?

And the plot itself, has the same "thin look"
it aways had. Almost as if the visual appearance
they're after, is of a result which has been
produced with a "pen plotter". Not everyone
remembers those. I drew so many Spirograph
patterns with one of these one summer at work
(out of boredom), I used up all our ink :-)
With Gnuplot, I'd have never lacked for amusement.

http://www.trs-80.com/images/hw-printer-plotter2x350.png

Paul

[Peter Pearson]

On Tue, 17 Mar 2015 06:00:03 -0500, Sunshine wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 19:48:40 -0500, John Hasler wrote:
>
>> That shows you that "apt-get install gnuplot" replaces all three. Do so
>> and be happy. You'll also want gnuplot-doc.
>
> Oh. OK. It doesn't "tell" me that, but I see all three in
> the output of the command ...

[snip]

You're not alone, Sunshine. I've been using Linux for over 20 years,
and I still haven't found good introductory documentation on these
package-management tools.

Such good introductory documentation (if anybody knows where it is, or
is thinking of writing it) would define a minimal set of new concepts,
then address the basic puzzles that unsophisticated users like Sunshine
and me have to face: People say I should install Thing X ... It's not
in my distribution's usual repository ... What will stop working if I
uninstall Thing Y ... What should I do with this .deb file ... Can I
check whether the installed files have been corrupted ... How bad is
it to follow advice that uses some *different* pacakge-management
commands ...

--
To email me, substitute nowhere->runbox, invalid->com.

[Godzilla]

On 2015-03-17, Sunshine, published this proof of the Infinite Monkey Theorem:

This may be of interest to you:
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/

In your repos, it would be maxima, and maxima-xmaxima

--
♖ ♘ ♗ ♕ ♔ ♗ ♘ ♖

[Sunshine]

On Tue, 17 Mar 2015 13:19:10 -0400, Paul wrote:

> That kinda looks like Qt decorations ?

Hi Paul,
I installed both the X11 and QT versions, and I have
absolutely no idea which one is the one running. :)

[Sunshine]

On Tue, 17 Mar 2015 20:55:07 +0000, Godzilla wrote:

> This may be of interest to you:
> http://maxima.sourceforge.net/

Nice. Very nice. I am often trying to graph algebraic equations,
and I use Desmos and Geogebra; but I didn't know about Maxima.

Thanks.

[Chris Ahlstrom]

Sunshine wrote this copyrighted missive and expects royalties:

This is also a good one; lots of scientoids use R:

http://www.r-project.org/

Both project should be in your distro's repository.

By the way, while gnuplot-x11 provides the graphics, gnuplot-qt is merely
a Qt terminal for output, and even if installed, it is not the default
output terminal.

--
Writing software is more fun than working.

[Sunshine]

On Wed, 18 Mar 2015 06:25:22 -0400, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:

> By the way, while gnuplot-x11 provides the graphics, gnuplot-qt is merely
> a Qt terminal for output, and even if installed, it is not the default
> output terminal.

Maybe that's why I didn't notice anything different.
In the end, probably the right one was likely to be the gnuplot-x11.
But, how was I to know at the time.

[Dirk T. Verbeek]

Op 19-03-15 om 00:02 schreef Sunshine:

Because as a Kubuntu user you should know KDE runs QT?

Fact that the QT package is 'just' a shim on top of the actual X11
application is less important, as a KDE user you would select the QT
package and the X11 package would automagically be installed as an
essential dependency.

[Sunshine]

On Thu, 19 Mar 2015 00:23:42 +0100, Dirk T. Verbeek wrote:

> Because as a Kubuntu user you should know KDE runs QT?

Heh heh ... Once you know the answer, the answer is easy to know.

[Chris Ahlstrom]

Sunshine wrote this copyrighted missive and expects royalties:

> On Thu, 19 Mar 2015 00:23:42 +0100, Dirk T. Verbeek wrote:
>
>> Because as a Kubuntu user you should know KDE runs QT?
>
> Heh heh ... Once you know the answer, the answer is easy to know.

What's weird is that it is made pretty clear in the Debian repository as
view through, say, aptitude. I would have thought Ubuntu would preserve
that information.

Oh well. Usually when you have to dig for info, you learn more.
That's a plus!

--
Cohen's Law:
There is no bottom to worse.