no more graphics

I can no longer get any graphics from Octave. I'm using Octave 3.2.3 on a Mac. When I try to execute a graphics command, like

xs = 0:.1:2*pi;

plot(xs, cos(xs))

I get the following error:

dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib

Referenced from: /usr/X11R6/lib/libfontconfig.1.dylib

Reason: Incompatible library version: libfontconfig.1.dylib requires version 13.0.0 or later, but libfreetype.6.dylib provides version 10.0.0

dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib

Referenced from: /usr/X11R6/lib/libfontconfig.1.dylib

Reason: Incompatible library version: libfontconfig.1.dylib requires version 13.0.0 or later, but libfreetype.6.dylib provides version 10.0.0

/Applications/Gnuplot.app/Contents/Resources/bin/gnuplot: line 71: 23118 Trace/BPT trap GNUTERM="${GNUTERM}" GNUPLOT_HOME="${GNUPLOT_HOME}" PATH="${PATH}" DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="${DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH}" HOME="${HOME}" GNUHELP="${GNUHELP}" DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH="${DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH}" GNUPLOT_PS_DIR="${GNUPLOT_PS_DIR}" DISPLAY="${DISPLAY}" GNUPLOT_DRIVER_DIR="${GNUPLOT_DRIVER_DIR}" "${ROOT}/bin/gnuplot-4.2.6" "$@"

/Applications/Gnuplot.app/Contents/Resources/bin/gnuplot: line 71: 23119 Trace/BPT trap GNUTERM="${GNUTERM}" GNUPLOT_HOME="${GNUPLOT_HOME}" PATH="${PATH}" DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="${DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH}" HOME="${HOME}" GNUHELP="${GNUHELP}" DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH="${DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH}" GNUPLOT_PS_DIR="${GNUPLOT_PS_DIR}" DISPLAY="${DISPLAY}" GNUPLOT_DRIVER_DIR="${GNUPLOT_DRIVER_DIR}" "${ROOT}/bin/gnuplot-4.2.6" "$@"

error: you must have gnuplot installed to display graphics; if you have gnuplot installed in a non-standard location, see the 'gnuplot_binary' function

I believe it's exactly the same error message when I ask for a more complicated plot, like one produced using the mesh() or imshow() commands.

This phenomenon only started happening within the last week. Before then graphs such as these were produced perfectly well. I can think of two things that may have played a role.

1. Sometime between when graphics worked and now, I was doing a calculation in Octave that employed a rather sizable matrix. There appeared to be a core dump (I don't recall if an actual octave-core file was produced, but I doubt I still have it now if there was one), then my system became unresponsive so that I couldn't get control of any process or window, and ultimately I used the power button to reboot. I just do not recall if I tried any graphics in Octave immediately after rebooting/restoring the operating system to know if graphics worked again.

2. The IT people at my institution occasionally push software updates onto my machine. Some were pushed on me last week. I don't know exactly what they were, but could probably find out if it were absolutely necessary.

Most of my x11 stuff I've obtained from MacPorts, but I never went and obtained my own version of libfreetype nor libfontconfig. In fact, I haven't obtained anything new from MacPorts in some time, unless something was grabbed from there in the software update IT pushed on me.

Anyway, as you might expect, I'm more interested in the solution than in the cause. I have tried dragging Octave.app and GnuPlot.app to the trash and reinstalling them. This seemed not to have any effect. When I type

$ which octave

$ which gnuplot

at the prompt, I get answered with

/usr/local/bin/octave

/usr/local/bin/gnuplot

and, following up on those, I type

$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/octave

$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/gnuplot

brings the responses

lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 54 Aug 18 01:39 /usr/local/bin/octave -> /Applications/Octave.app/Contents/Resources/bin/octave

lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 56 Aug 18 01:39 /usr/local/bin/gnuplot -> /Applications/Gnuplot.app/Contents/Resources/bin/gnuplot

which is consistent with soft links I established sometime this summer when installing Octave on this machine. I can start gnuplot in a terminal:

$ gnuplot

G N U P L O T

Version 4.2 patchlevel 6

last modified Sep 2009

System: Darwin 10.5.0

Terminal type set to 'x11'

Is there a fix someone can suggest?

From:	Thomas Scofield
Subject:	no more graphics
Date:	Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:22:16 -0500