To install from sources: ======================== Installation instructions are found in the file INSTALL in this directory after going through this file. In a very small nutshell: - Under Unix, use configure and make - Under DOS, if you are using bash and DJGPP, you can just run config/djconfig.sh - Other platforms, copy the relevant makefile from config/ to src, cd to src and make. See config/README for what each of those files is for. Note: some of those files haven't been updated in ages, so they may no longer be usable. An important about the PDFlib Lite library: =========================================== The 'pdf' terminal driver uses an external library provided by PDFlib GmbH, Germany ( http://www.pdflib.de/ ). This library is available under two strictly separate licencing models. Depending on the environment you use gnuplot in, you may have to purchase a commercial licence for PDFlib even though gnuplot itself is free software. There's a special version of PDFlib, called ``PDFlib Lite'', which is freely redistrutable, but programs linked to that are strictly for non-commercial usage only. *You* are liable for whatever violations of this licence occur in a gnuplot binary built by you. IMPORTANT NOTE ON GIF, PNG and JPEG SUPPORT =========================================== The gd library from http://www.boutell.com/gd/ is used to generate GIF, PNG and JPEG outputs. Old versions of the Boutell gd library (versions 1.2 to 1.4) produced only GIF output. This means you cannot obtain a PNG or a JPEG output from gnuplot 4.2 with these versions. (Note that gnuplot's old minimalistic but standalone PNG driver driver has now been removed). Versions of the the Boutell gd library between 1.6 and 2.0.27 do not support GIF output because of patent concerns (see Note 1 below). This means that with these versions, you cannot generate a GIF output directly from gnuplot. However versions 1.6 and newer support PNG outputs, and 1.7 and newer support JPEG outputs. Versions 1.6.2 and newer also support TrueType fonts. Version 2.0.28 of the Boutell gd library restored GIF functionality. Version 2.0.29 added support for GIF animation. We recommend using version 2.0.29 or newer for use with gnuplot. Note 1 - UNISYS patent (why no more GIF images) ----------------------------------------------- The UNISYS patent covers the LZW technology which is used to create gifs. To my knowledge, only gd library version 1.3, and possibly version 1.4 are free of LZW code and should therefore be used with gnuplot. Versions 1.2 and 1.5 should not be used unless you have a license from Unisys to use LZW code or are in a country where the UNISYS patent does not apply. Note 2 - Open source programs for PNG to GIF conversion ------------------------------------------------------- ImageMagick ( www.ImageMagick.org ) This is an open source package for general image manipulation and file conversion, supported on a wide variety of platforms. For example the command "convert file.png file.gif" will convert a PNG image file to an equivalent GIF image file. On platforms that allow pipes in the "set output" command, you can generate and convert the images at the same time from gnuplot, as in this example: set terminal png font "arial,12" size 500,300 set output '| convert png:- image.tiff' Utah Raster Toolkit ( http://www.cs.utah.edu/gdc/projects/urt/ ) A general image file conversion library and associated file conversion utilities. Distributed as C source code. To convert from PNG to GIF, use the commands pngtorle -o temp.rle image.png rletogif -o image.gif temp.rle