Chart::Gnuplot and Windows XP

[dHarry]

Dear venerable wise ones

I want to create some 2D plots and went for Chart::Gnuplot

Both Chart::Gnuplot and gnuplot install fine. Gnuplot works. When I try a simple Perl example it fails, error message: 'gnuplot' is not recognized as an internal or external command,operable program or batch file. Not a surprise since Chart::Gnuplot issues a gnuplot command. Under Windows this is not available, instead it’s called wgnuplot.exe. I googled and tried a few suggested solutions, like creating a gnuplot.bat file pointing to the right file, this fails. Next I investigated building gnuplot from the sources but then you end up with the same wgnuplot.exe.

Has anybody made Chart::Gnuplot with gnuplot work under Windows XP? Or is this yet another reason to change OS?!

[BrowserUk]

'gnuplot' is not recognized as an internal or external command,operable program or batch file.

If you put a file called gnuplot.bat somewhere it can be found through your path environment variable, it should work fine.

Or you could rename (or make a copy of) wgnuplot.exe called gnuplot.exe. Again, it would need to be located somewhere on your path.

[dHarry]

Changing the name of the executable gives an "Invalid Parameter - 90" error.

Using a .bat file: "C:\gnuplot\binaries\wgnuplot.exe" %1 results in the call C:\workspace\Testbed>"C:\gnuplot\binaries\wgnuplot.exe" \tmp\NTEVfipQVM/plot and gives the same error.

[BrowserUk]

I suspect, but am not in a position to confirm just now, that the problem is this forward slash:

 \tmp\NTEVfipQVM/plot
................^

And that if you modified Chart::Gnuplot something along the lines of:

sub new
{
    my ($class, %hash) = @_;

    # Create temporary file to store Gnuplot instructions
    if (!defined $hash{_multiplot})     # if not in multiplot mode
    {
        my $dirTmp = tempdir(CLEANUP => 1, DIR => '/tmp');
########### change here
        $hash{_script} = $^O eq 'MSWin32' ? "$dirTmp\plot" : "$dirTmp/
+plot";

Then it might work.

Of course, there are probably other places (like the line above) that might need similar treatment--and there are certainly better ways (File::Spec and friends) of making the path handling properly cross-platform--, but a few simple changes like this might allow you to get on with your work.

And if you fed what changes you need, back to the module author, they might be able to integrate them back into the next release.

[Anonymous Monk]

Has anybody made Chart::Gnuplot with gnuplot work under Windows XP? Or is this yet another reason to change OS?!
Wow, just wow, the drama :)

 
    # Create chart object and specify the properties of the chart
    my $chart = Chart::Gnuplot->new(
        output => "fig/simple.png",
        title  => "Simple testing",
        xlabel => "My x-axis label",
        ylabel => "My y-axis label",
        ....
        gnuplot => "dramaqueen.exe",
    );

http://search.cpan.org/~kwmak/Chart-Gnuplot-0.05/lib/Chart/Gnuplot.pm#gnuplot

[dHarry]

Bless you brother, I completely missed the gnuplot => "path to exe" option. However, also in this case I get an Invalid Parameter - 90 error message.

[massa]

Based on your other reply, it seems that you are mixing "/" and "\" directory separators in your chart's file name. Try not to... :-)

the file name should either be
\tmp\NTEVfipQVM\plot or
/tmp/NTEVfipQVM/plot but not
\tmp\NTEVfipQVM/plot ...

[syphilis]

However, also in this case I get an Invalid Parameter - 90 error message

I'm starting to get the feeling that the gnuplot executable and wgnuplot.exe must take different arguments.

Cheers,
Rob

[Anonymous Monk]

Hmm, works for me :/

I used gp424win32.zip from here.

I also removed DIR => '/tmp' from Gnuplot.pm, because I like my existing temp directory just fine.

[BrowserUk]

A little more information now I've gotten to downloading the gnuplot package. There seem to be a lot of problems with Chart::Gnuplot.

Amongst others,

• you need to code the output file thusly:     output => 'c:\\\\test\\\\test.png', in order to get 'c:\\test\\test.png' into the command file. Otherwise you get the Invalid Parameter - 90 error.

  You'll also get that same error if the output file already exists.

• The output produced (once you get it to actually produce output!), is initially not the .png you are specify, but rather an EPS format file. (with a .png extension).

  Chart::Gnuplot then goes looking for a convert utility (from the ImageMagick distribution), to translate that into the required .png (gif, bmp etc.)

  Depending upon the output format required, it will also go looking for a couple of other utilities, ps2pdf, pdf2ps which are also not a part of the distribution. I'm not sure where they come from.

It looks like it would take some serious work (and therefore a serious need!) to get this working under windows.

[Anonymous Monk]

For me this works on Windows XP:

    
my $chart = Chart::Gnuplot->new(
                                     gnuplot  => $gnuplotpath,
                                     terminal => "gif transparent",
                                     output   => $filename,
    );

If terminal is not specified I also get the Invalid Parameter - 90 error.

[Anonymous Monk]

I also got the -90 error in windows because I did not have ghostscript installed. I installed it and it worked. Also I got errors if I did not set the PATH envt variable or else give the full path to gnuplot.exe and convert.exe.

[Anonymous Monk]

Hi guys, very new in installing extensions of PERL. Want to use GNUPLOT for completing a PERL code. Using Win 7 professional (32 bit). Unpacked "Chart-Gnuplot-0.17.tar.gz" and created a "Chart" subdirectory in the lib directory (by intuition since I did not read instructions on installing perl extensions ==> hate to read complicated instructions!!)... apparently it starts working when trying an example but process gets stacked at the beginning of Gnuplot.pm (line 5) since apparently the File::Copy extension can not do the "move" operation .... does anyone know how to deal with this problem?.... my knowledge of PERL is very limited... I am not an IT guy but just a common PERL user for some engineering tasks... I would appreciate any help on this matter but explained in a very simple way. Thanks in advance folks: [e-mail]

[Anonymous Monk]

windows comes with a convert.exe which is nothing like the imagemagick convert.exe

You need to manage your %PATH, police your $ENV{PATH} / use Env '@PATH';

[vagabonding electron]

Yes, it works on Windows for me.

You should set the path to the executable as already mentioned. Note that there are wgnuplot.exe and gnuplot.exe in the bin directory, you need gnuplot.exe, not the former.

Without setting terminal option it works only with postscript files. As mentioned in the pod you should use e.g. terminal => 'png' to plot in the other formats.

There is a nice set of examples that comes with the installation.

The following example runs under Win7 with Gnuplot 5.

#!/perl
use strict;
use warnings FATAL => qw(all);

use Chart::Gnuplot;
my $chart = Chart::Gnuplot->new(
  output => "X:/TMP/multiplot.png",
  gnuplot => "C:/gnuplot5/gnuplot/bin/gnuplot.exe",
  terminal => 'png',
);
my $left = Chart::Gnuplot->new();
my $sine = Chart::Gnuplot::DataSet->new(
                func  => "sin(x)",
);
$left->add2d($sine);

my $center = Chart::Gnuplot->new();
my $cosine = Chart::Gnuplot::DataSet->new(
                func  => "cos(x)",
            );
$center->add2d($cosine);

my $right = Chart::Gnuplot->new();
my $tangent = Chart::Gnuplot::DataSet->new(
                func  => "tan(x)",
);
$right->add2d($tangent);

$chart->multiplot([
                [$left, $center, $right]
            ]);