Compiling plt under Linux or Unix

plt should be easy to compile and to run on any version of Unix (or Linux). You will need to have a working X Window System installation in order to compile xplt and to use it to make screen plots, but lwplt can be used without X (and it should be possible to compile it under any POSIX-compliant environment).

If you plan to use plt without X, you may wish to use GhostScript as a screen viewer for lwplt. GhostScript is a free PostScript renderer that runs on a vast variety of operating systems; get it from http://ghostscript.com/.

To install plt:

• If you have GNU tar, unpack the source archive using:

tar xfvz plt.tar.gz

Otherwise, if you have another version of tar, unpack it using:

gzip -d plt.tar.gz
tar xfv plt.tar

• You should now have a directory named plt, containing installation instructions in INSTALL and a set of sources in subdirectory src. Read and follow the instructions in INSTALL if they differ from those outlined here.

• Enter the plt directory: make any needed changes to the site-dependent variables in Makefile; compile the plt sources; and install the executables:

cd plt/src
make install

You may need root permissions to do this successfully. If the make command fails, read the text file named Makefile in the plt/src directory to see how to proceed.

Add the directory in which plt has been installed (usually /usr/local/bin) to your PATH if necessary.

• To test the installation, try this:

make xdemo

If you have gv (included in most Linux distributions, and freely available from http://wwwthep.physik.uni-mainz.de/~plass/gv/), you can see the same demonstration in PostScript format by typing:

make psdemo

• (Optional) If you wish to generate PNG images using lwcat -png (see appendix C, install ImageMagick (free download from http://www.imagemagick.org/) if you have not already done so. Most Linux distributions include ImageMagick already.