Re: aquaterm

[Joe Koski]

on 12/11/05 5:54 PM, John B. Thoo at address@hidden wrote:

> Joe---
> 
> On Dec 11, 2005, at 2:07 PM, Joe Koski wrote:
> 
>> on 12/11/05 11:50 AM, Thomas M. Canty at address@hidden
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> I just installed, octave, gnuplot, and aquaterm, but I am having
>>> trouble getting octave to recognize aquaterm.  It will only set term
>>> to x11.  What am I doing wrong?  I did install gnuplot first, but
>>> once I got aquaterm running, i reinstalled gnuplot.
>>> 
>>> Tom Canty
>>> 
>> I keep the lines
>> 
>>  export GNUTERM=aqua
>>  export DISPLAY=:0.0
>> 
>> In my .bash_profile and .bashrc files in my home directory (OS X
>> 10.3.9 with
>> bash shell), and that seems to tell gnuplot where to find aquaterm. If
>> you
>> don't have those files yet, you can create them with a text editor.
>> Alternatively, you can gset aqua in octave each time you want a plot.
>> You
>> don't need X11 running to work with aquaterm.
> 
> Following your example, above, I put in those two lines in my .profile
> file and gnuplot used Aquaterm to plot.  Very neat.  That was the first
> time I had ever used Aquaterm.
> 
> Two questions (not Octave related per se).  1. Using an X11 window, I
> can rotate a (3d) plot by using the mouse and the Ctrl key, but I
> couldn't do that with Aquaterm as it was.  How?  2. What are the
> advantages and disadvantages of using Aquaterm vs. X11?
> 
> TIA.
> 
> ---John.
Answers:

1) As far as I know, you can't rotate a figure with the mouse in AquaTerm,
although you can use the regular Mac "Page Setup" command to control page
orientation. You may want to ask this question on the AquaTerm users list
(address@hidden) to see if the AquaTerm developer, Per,
has a solution. 

I often use the octave-forge print command to write color .ps files that
look almost as good as AquaTerm output when converted to .eps or .pdf. (The
.ps file lines are, in my opinion, too thin when printed or viewed.) A
solution for your use may be to use X11 to rotate, followed by a replot to
.ps format.

2) The advantages of AquaTerm are that you don't need to remember to start
X11 and run octave in an xterm window. I use the standard Mac terminal
application. Second, my personal opinion is that for standard 2-D plots,
AquaTerm output looks better than X11 output; plus I can make copies of any
plot I see, after the fact. With a bit more effort, I can control the font
and font size, but maybe I could also do that with X11, also.

Joe










-------------------------------------------------------------
Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
How to fund new projects:  http://www.octave.org/funding.html
Subscription information:  http://www.octave.org/archive.html
-------------------------------------------------------------