Installing gnu plot for macOS High Sierra - macos

How does one install a runnable version of gnu plot in macOS high Sierra?
I am looking for a way to make this work with the GUI, but even just getting the terminal script to run would be a success.
Thanks!

The Brew implementation of gnuplot is not really usable because it no longer supports the necessary terminals (e.g., you can no longer provide --with-aquaterm or --with-x11 during installation).
However, the MacPorts package manager has a usable install for gnuplot (it's safe to have both Brew and MacPorts installed). https://www.macports.org/
After intalling AquaTerm, I used the following to install gnuplot, and all is working as expected:
sudo port install gnuplot +aquaterm
I'm using macOS Mojave 10.14.4.

It's easy enough with homebrew.
First, install Xcode command line tools:
xcode-select --install
Then install homebrew by going to homebrew website and copying and pasting the one-liner installation script. I don't want to paste that line here in case it changes down the line, so get the latest from the homebrew website.
Now you have a full package manager that allows you to find, install, update and delete thousands of packages. So you can easily find gnuplot or anything else with:
brew search gnuplot
Once you have found your package, check the avaiable options with:
brew options gnuplot
Sample Output
--with-aquaterm
Build with AquaTerm support
--with-cairo
Build the Cairo based terminals
--with-qt
Build with qt support
--with-wxmac
Build wxmac support. Need with-cairo to build wxt terminal
--with-x11
Build with x11 support
Now install with some sensible options for graphical plots:
brew install gnuplot --with-qt --with-x11
Always ensure your PATH starts with /usr/local/bin for homebrew since that is where it installs programs. I put the following in $HOME/.profile. And I also set the GNUTERM environment variable:
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
export GNUTERM=qt
Now run gnuplot:
gnuplot
Sample Run
Check out many useful packages, a nice new Python not Apple's old v2.7, a nice Linux-compatible sed not Apple's BSD version, a nice grep, a nice find, the brilliant GNU awk, ImageMagick, tmux, GNU Parallel, jhead, Poppler, exiftool, Mosquitto, pdfgrep, pngcrush, ZeroMQ... the list goes on...

#David Atri: gnuplot is not as standalone as you might think. Try to compile it from source and you will see how many options and dependencies it has.The main challenge in MacOSX is to get the PDF drivers running. The fact that you see many things as standalone is the good integration work made by the developers

brew is no longer support options.
You can still do "brew install gnuplot", but it will install with just the terminals that the person who wrote the homebrew formula wanted, not necessarily the ones you want.
Compiling gnuplot from the sources is still a nightmare, so you live with the brew-formula writer's choices, write your own brew formula (not completely trivial), or you struggle with huge pile of dependencies and try to compile from the sources.

Related

How to use ImageMagick with XQuartz

I am trying to create animated visualization in R and people say needs to install ImageMagick. However, it seems that current Mac no longer support x11, while ImageMagick just needs X11 server on Mac. Install ImageMagick
I have also tried brew install imagemagick --with-x11, doesn't work and only returned so many errors.
Apples says need to use XQuartz to replace x11. I have XQuartz, but when I turned on it, typed the same commands here, still give me the same error
display: delegate library support not built-in '' (X11) # error/display.c/DisplayImageCommand/1891.
So, my questions is, how to install and use ImageMagick with Mac XQuartz?
I created a Homebrew ImageMagick X11 formula that can be used like this:
brew uninstall imagemagick # without X11 support
brew install --cask xquartz
brew install tlk/imagemagick-x11/imagemagick
Note that homebrew-core used to support formula options such as --with-x11 in order to enable a configure option of the same name. This is no longer the case as the Homebrew maintainer(s) decided to remove formula options from homebrew-core formulas.
Updated Answer
Note that things have changed a bit since I wrote this answer, Homebrew no longer supports installation options such as --with-x11. One possibility, pointed out in the comments by #MattWhite was to install ImageMagick interactively:
brew install imagemagick -i;
./configure --disable-osx-universal-binary --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/imagemagick/7.0.8-66 --disable-silent-rules --with-x11
make install
exit
Another option that occurred to me was that, rather than installing all of XQuartz, you could just add your own delegate that uses macOS's built-in Preview app and tell ImageMagick to use that, i.e. delegate to it. This means you can do things like:
magick SomeImage.png -crop 100x100+10+10 display:
For this to work, you need to find your delegates.xml file. I used this:
magick -list delegate | awk '/^Path/ {print $2}'
and mine is at:
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/imagemagick/7.1.0-16/etc/ImageMagick-7/delegates.xml
Then I edited that file and added a line very close to the end, but just above the last line like this:
<delegate decode="miff" encode="display" spawn="True" command="magick %i %u.png ; /usr/bin/open -a Preview %u.png"/>
That converts any file formats that ImageMagick knows into a PNG which the Preview app understands and should be able to represent most images, even those with 16-bit depth and transparency.
Original Answer
In general, to use ImageMagick with X11, you will probably be most likely to succeed if you follow the following steps:
Step 1 - Install or update Xcode command line tools
It is important that your developer tools are up-to-date, especially if you have updated your macOS version since setting them up originally. You can do this with:
xcode-select --install
Step 2 - Ensure ImageMagick is correctly installed
The easiest way to do this is first to ensure that old versions of ImageMagick are removed and cleaned up and that you then install (or re-install) with the latest version:
brew update # update homebrew itself
brew rm imagemagick # remove old IM versions
brew install imagemagick --with-x11 # install latest IM version including X11 support
Step 3 - Check
If you have been trying for ages to install ImageMagick, you may have left some old versions lying around. It is important that you use the homebrew-installed version in /usr/local/bin, so check you are running the version you expect with the following:
which convert # should report "/usr/local/bin/convert"
which magick # should report "/usr/local/bin/magick"
identify -version # should report same version as next command
brew info imagemagick
Step 4 - Start X11
Start X11, it is probably easiest to fire up xclock, which not only starts X11, but also checks everything X11 is running and your X11 environment is configured correctly:
xclock &
Step 5 - Run ImageMagick X11
Now you can test your ImageMagick configuration, without needing any test images as follows - since the wizard: image is built-in:
display wizard:

IPython3 for Mac OSX

I have Ipython installed but it runs on python 2.7.5 , I also have python 3.3 installed. How can I make changes such that Ipython runs on python 3.3 not 2.7.5?
You need to install pip for Python 3 - it's as easy as going to the pip-installer.org Installation page and following the instructions. Briefly, download get-pip.py and save it someplace, like your Downloads folder. Navigate there in Terminal, and run
sudo python3 get-pip.py
and you should soon have either a pip3 or pip-3.3 command (maybe both, I don't remember). You should now be able to run
sudo pip3 install ipython[all]
and hopefully all the dependencies will be installed as well. If installation chokes, use pip3 to install pyzmq, tornado, pyreadline, jinja2, pygments, and maybe a few others. Make sure you read the docs before you start, so you have an idea of what you're trying to achieve. IPython is large and quite complex, with many moving parts, so in the absence of a package manager (see below) it can take a bit of time before everything is up and running.
The Package Manager Way
There are other options, too. You can install Anaconda, a "Completely free enterprise-ready Python distribution for large-scale data processing, predictive analytics, and scientific computing" with over 100 packages, including IPython and its dependencies. By default, the Anaconda installer gives you Python 2.7, but you can use the conda command to install Python 3.
My personal favorite is to install Python 3 and IPython using MacPorts. Yes, it'll install Py3 all over again, but unless you're really starving for disk space (in which case you probably don't want to be installing large packages like IPython) it's no big deal. Using the port command, once the base MacPorts installation has been put in place, you can just run
sudo port install py33-ipython +pyqt4
and all the other dependencies will be taken care of, (hopefully) flawlessly, without your having to do anything else except wait for a long time while things like PyQt are compiled. You may also need to run sudo port install py33-ipython +notebook if you want the notebook, I don't recall if it's installed otherwise. BTW, you do need X11, Xcode, and the Xcode command-line tools for MacPorts, but they would likely be required if you do the first option as not all packages have binaries available for OS X. The excellent documentation walks you through everything, from installation to using the port command to maintaining your system. I would highly recommend modifying your ~/.profile (or ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bashrc, or equivalent for your shell) to add the MacPorts install directories (/opt/local/bin and /opt/local/sbin, by default) to the front of your path. Just add export PATH='/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH' to the end of the file.
A third alternative option is to use Homebrew. It's similar to MacPorts, in that the brew command is a type of package manager like port and conda, but in my experience it doesn't have as many packages, and doesn't quite work as seamlessly as port. However, my observations on StackOverflow, Ask Different and other fora seem to indicate that about 50% of people have great experiences with brew and don't like port, while the other half loves port over brew. YMMV.
I hope this helps. Good luck with your installation!

Gnuplot cannot recognize AquaTerm even I have it installed on OSX 10.8.5 [duplicate]

I've installed Octave and gnuplot via Homebrew, and downloaded AquaTerm.dmg.
When I try to plot, I get the following message:
octave:4> plot(x,y)
gnuplot> set terminal aqua enhanced title "Figure 1" font "*,6"
^
`line 0: unknown or ambiguous terminal type; type just 'set terminal' for a list`
In a bash terminal set terminal, set Terminal, set term, (and the same, followed by "aqua" too) etc gives nothing.
I've tried plotting again from octave having the "AquaTerm" already open, but nothing. I've tried plotting directly from gnuplot but same problem.. How can I do this "set terminal aqua"?
Gnuplot starting message says "Terminal type set to 'x11'" but no idea how to change it, the previous commands didn't work neither.
Since AquaTerm wasn't installed from Homebrew maybe octave/gnupot can't find it... but no idea.
Any guess? Thanks!
I had to add setenv("GNUTERM","X11") to OCTAVE_HOME/share/octave/site/m/startup/octaverc (OCTAVE_HOME usually is /usr/local) to make it work permanently.
Solution found and more details on: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-apps-games/242997-plots-octave-dont-work.html
I've ran into a similar issue with Octave-cli, version 3.8.0, on OS X 10.9.1. Observing how Octave-gui could still plot charts, and reading up the answer with octaverc, I've got plotting to work from Octave-cli by adding a line with setenv("GNUTERM","qt") to /usr/local/octave/3.8.0/share/octave/site/m/startup/octaverc
I didn't have to re-install gnuplot or other dependencies.
Setting the terminal type to x11 would solve the problem, but if you want to get AquaTerm working with gnuplot here's how:
First we need to uninstall the existing installation of gnuplot, open up a terminal and run this command.
brew uninstall gnuplot
Download AquaTerm from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/aquaterm/ and install as you would any OSX application.
From here on, there are two ways to get gnuplot happy with aquaterm, Method 1 is easier, but didn't work for me because my AquaTerm installation didn't create the correct symlinks in /usr/local/lib, Method 2 is the one that worked for me, and I am sharing the steps I took to get it working.
Method 1: Simply reinstall gnuplot after installing AquaTerm seems to fix this issue for people.
brew install gnuplot
Go to the verify step to see if everything worked, if not, follow method 2
Method 2: This method is more advanced, but guaranteed to work if you are patient.
Essentially gnuplot cannot locate the AquaTerm library files, that's why aqua doesn't show up as a terminal type option after we installed gnuplot. We need to modify the homebrew recipe for gnuplot to enable aquaterm support, open up the brew recipe for gnuplot by typing:
brew edit gnuplot
And add these lines as shown in this github commit message, this will enable the brew option for gnuplot to include aquaterm https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/14647#issuecomment-21132477
Check to see if the proper AquaTerm library symlinks exist by doing these checks:
ls /usr/local/lib/libaquaterm*
ls /usr/local/include/aquaterm/*
The first line above should return some *.dylib files, the second line above should return
some *.h files, if they do not exist run these commands from terminal:
sudo ln -s /Library/Frameworks/AquaTerm.framework/Versions/A/AquaTerm /usr/local/lib/libaquaterm.dylib
sudo ln -s /Library/Frameworks/AquaTerm.framework/Versions/A/AquaTerm /usr/local/lib/libaquaterm.1.0.0.dylib
sudo ln -s /Library/Frameworks/AquaTerm.framework/Versions/A/Headers/* /usr/local/include/aquaterm/.
This is necessary sometimes as the installer for AquaTerm can't create the symlinks in the correct places due to permission issues. Once the /usr/local/ symlinks are created, reinstall gnuplot like this:
brew install gnuplot --with-aquaterm # (formerly --aquaterm in old versions)
Verify that gnuplot can see aquaterm using the steps below and happy plotting!
Verify: that gnuplot was configured with AquaTerm correctly by launching gnuplot in terminal
gnuplot
Type this in the gnuplot terminal
gnuplot> set term
Look for the line
Available terminal types:
aqua Interface to graphics terminal server for Mac OS X
...
If you see the that line above, then you are done, gnuplot is configured correctly and everybody's happy.
I found a way to generate the plots with octave, although is not using AquaTerm but x11. The problem was that Octave was "forcing" gnuplot to use aquaterm to plot. Instead of installing and integrating aquaterm into gnuplot, in octave typed: setenv GNUTERM x11. With this, plots are generated with x11 which is already in the terminal list of gnuplot (set terminal). I know it's a patch, but finally I don't mind aquaterm or x11, I just want plots to be generated
set terminal or set term is gnuplot command.
You just need to run gnuplot from command line to get access to the gnuplot shell.
However, this didn't work for me, neither did the setenv("GNUTERM","x11") in /usr/local/share/octave/site/m/startup/octaverc or ~/.octaverc (both do the same thing).
So I ran set term in gnuplot shell as saw no x11 in the list.
I used homebrew to install gnuplot, so I first uninstalled it brew uninstall gnuplot, then installed with x11 using --with-x flag for that:
brew install gnuplot --with-x
This solved the issue for me.
Use brew info gnuplot to see the list of flags for gnuplot installation.
P.S.
And yes, I did download an X11 dmg and installed it using package installer, still gnuplot had no x11 in the list of supported terminals.
You can try this:
>> brew reinstall gnuplot --with-aquaterm
or
>> brew uninstall gnuplot
>> brew install gnuplot --with-aquaterm
Create a file .octaverc in your home directory and set GNUTERM to X11
echo "setenv('GNUTERM','X11')" > ~/.octaverc
Open octave terminal and type sombrero to check whether plotting works
octave:1> sombrero
This worked for me:
Unistall gnuplot
brew uninstall gnuplot
Install AquaTerm. You can download it from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/aquaterm/
Reinstall gnuplot
brew install gnuplot
Anton is correct. You can now just reinstall gnuplot with the --with-aquaterm option. I'd upvote his answer if I had enough reputation points to do it.
$ brew uninstall gnuplot
$ brew install gnuplot --with-aquaterm
Mackuntu mentioned above that this issue has been discussed on github.
https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/14647#issuecomment-21132477
But he advised using the option --aquaterm. If you take a close look at the github link you'll see that the option is --with-aquaterm. Reinstalling gnuplot with this option today allowed me to run some old octave code that uses gnuplot for plotting graphs on OS X.
In my case, on Mas OS Mojave, the solution that worked for my was slightly different (it could be a matter of syntax only).
Following the discussion on this thread I came with the solution that worked for me - it might be important to note that it was possible for me to plot from the Octave-cli but not from Octave command line directly in terminal.
So I created a ˜/.octaverc file and added the following command to it:
setenv GNUTERM qt
Just quit the command line from octave and entered again and was able to plot.
Following thing worked for me:
setenv("GNUTERM","qt")
You can either run it on the octave cli, for local run or can set in the octave startup file for permanent.
/usr/local/octave/3.8.0/share/octave/site/m/startup/octaverc
Just remember in case you change octaverc file you have to have write permissions on it.
I have an answer that should resolve the issue you're encountering. Essentially, for me the problem was that the gnuplot build did not locate the proper AquaTerm libraries. Check out the post I made:
http://deveneezer.blogspot.com/2013/06/octave-gnuplot-and-aquaterm.html
What has worked for me is installing gnuplot-nox. Also see https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4866
Seems like the best way to install gnuplot-nox is to install fink.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fink/?source=dlp
fink install gnuplot-nox
seems to do a good job. However the installation was failing at one point.
So I installed gnuplot-minimal then ran gnuplot-nox install again and everything worked just fine.
fink install gnuplot-minimal
fink install gnuplot-nox
gnuplot-nox install seemed to have set aqua as the default terminal for gnuplot. Verify that by going to gnuplot shell. To verify if plotting works, type plot(1) in the shell. It should show the plot in a window.
Hope that works for you.
Like suggested in other posts, setting GNUTERM to X11 didn't solve this issue for me. Also straight installing AquaTerm for Mac OSX didn't solve this issue.
The answer is already contained in the above, but this is simpler I think:
nano ~/.octaverc
add this:
setenv("GNUTERM", "X11")
Thats it restart octave you're done.
Here is the solution that worked for me (based on different parts of the mackuntu comment)
Gnuplot is probably already installed for you by the brew install octave command, so we need to remove it first
brew uninstall gnuplot
Then aquaterm has to be installed (http://sourceforge.net/projects/aquaterm/)
After install is complete you need to install gnuplot again. This is because brew detects the presence of aquaterm during install and will not do any checks for it after.
brew install gnuplot --with-aquaterm
If you launch gnuplot after install it should show that aquaterm is supported. And all graphics in octave will work.

How do I install ack on OS X (10.8.4)?

I am new to OS X and I am unable to figure out how to install ack. The instructions here didn't help, because the command "install" is failing. Please guide me proper commands.
So far, I have downloaded ack 2.04 and placed it in the /usr/bin folder and then ran perl Makefile.PL successfully. The next command install isn't working for me.
If you use Homebrew you can simply do:
$ brew install ack
If you are new to OSX I highly recommend this approach because it makes installation of stuff like this MUCH easier. It is a package manager for OSX.
Homebrew link: http://brew.sh/
You can also use the MacPorts installer for OSX:
sudo port install p5.<nn>-app-ack
where <nn> is the version of your Perl installation (Ack is written in Perl). If you don't know the version of Perl you have installed, just type:
perl --version
and you'll know what you need for the port command. The Ack installation page has the information you need for this. More information about MacPorts can be found here.
Searching the web, you'll find LOTS of opinions about Homebrew versus MacPorts. I've used both; they both work (and both fail occasionally - installation of this kind is complex). You'll need to pick one or the other and stick with it as Homebrew doesn't play nicely with MacPorts (or vice versa, depending on your POV). Overriding choice for me is MacPorts as it has many more packages than Homebrew and it puts its stuff in /opt/local to stay out of the way of other programs. YMMV

installing scipy on mac 10.6.8

I try to install scipy on my mac 10.6.8 but always have problem with it. I've installed ipython (sudo /usr/bin/easy_install-2.6 ipython) and numpy (python setup.py build/install), but when I installed scipy by the same way, I got always this error message:
RuntimeError: Running cythonize failed!
Could someone tell me how to solve this problem?
Have you tried using the binaries provided for OSX? That should ensure everything works.
EDIT
The easiest way I've found to keep package dependencies under control is to use MacPorts as much as possible because unlike Homebrew, the packages are designed to work together and dependencies are (almost always) automagically installed when you try to install something.
So, first, install MacPorts using the installer for Snow Leopard. Choose the option to install ports in a unique directory like /opt/local, so they don't conflict with whatever built-in versions the OS depends on. Also, ensure that /opt/local/bin and /opt/local/sbin are added to your $PATH before the system directories like /usr/bin, /bin, /sbin etc. so that when you run python from the command prompt you get the version you want. Your ~/.profile should have something like export PATH="/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH as its last line.
After MacPorts has been installed, you may want to restart just for fun to ensure that all of your environment variable are set up properly. Start Terminal.app (or your favorite replacement) and enter which port, which should return /opt/local/bin/port if everything worked correctly. Next, run sudo port selfupdate just to make sure everything is synced properly. Once that is done, we can install python and some modules. port allows you to pass a list of ports to be installed, so a command like sudo port install foo bar baz will install the latest versions of the foo, bar, and baz ports, along with any dependencies they may require, in the correct order. Some ports have binary distributions, and others are compiled as needed, so the first time you run it there may be a lot of dependencies to install. A nice feature of MacPorts is that you can have multiple versions of some packages installed at the same time, and you can switch between them if needed. Also, if port search is giving too many results, the online search engine can help you find what you're looking for.
To get a decent IPython-based Python 2 development environment going, you'll need the following:
python27
py27-ipython
py27-numpy
py27-scipy
py27-matplotlib (if you like drawing pretty pictures, but mainly so you can get pylab)
py27-pandas (DataFrames are your friend!)
and perhaps py27-pyqt4 if you run ipython via the qtconsole option
I'd also install py-pip and py27-distribute so you can install modules on your own if there is no MacPort version.
Finally, if you're a forward-looking person and want to use numpy et al. on Python 3, MacPorts has you covered! There are py32- and py33-based versions of all of the above packages except scipy, which is only py32 for now. However, I was able to install it just fine with pip, although I have a whole bunch of other devel tools on my machine, and I'm running 10.8.2, so YMMV.
Good luck!

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