gnuplot MacOSX GUI
Written by Marco Coïsson
February, 19th 2003
Please note that this application is no longer supported, because of my limited spare time. I cannot guarantee neither future development nor bug fixes. Sorry.
What is it?
gnuplot MacOSX GUI is a frontend (a Graphical User Interface) for gnuplot.
gnuplot is a command-driven Terminal application for data plotting and fitting.
It is available for MacOS X, MacOS 9, Linux and Windows and probably for other
operating systems. This frontend gives a graphical user interface for many
of the commands of gnuplot, thus removing the need to remember the syntax and formatting
of the mostly used commands.
Disclaimer
I wrote this application while learning how to use gnuplot. So I'm not an expert
of gnuplot. For this reason, if you know gnuplot better than me, you may find that
some commands are implemented in a strange, crazy or even stupid way. Actually,
I wrote this application for myself in order to start using gnuplot in a shorter time
without having to learn all those commands.
What you need (to know)
- A working version of gnuplot. Please note that you need a gnuplot build
that runs in the Terminal, not as an independent application (in other words:
you must have a gnuplot version that you must start and control via the Terminal
and not by double-clicking on an icon in Finder). Such a gnuplot distribution
is available for example through fink. You
can also get gnuplot without using fink.
- At least an idea of how gnuplot works. Although this frontend frees you from the
need to remember gnuplot commands, you might need to edit some of them before
the frontend sends them to gnuplot. Moreover, this frontend is not intended to reflect
the state of gnuplot but only to send commands to it, so any action you perform
in the frontend needs to be sent to gnuplot. In some cases this is done automatically
by the frontend itself, in other cases you have to explicitly send the command to gnuplot.
If you have some idea of how gnuplot works you should be able di clearly distinguish
these two cases.
Using gnuplot MacOSX GUI
Commands are grouped in sections (tabs) and should be self-explicatory if you
know the basics of gnuplot (as you should).
The "Command History" button opens
a drawer with the command history of the current session. Clicking on a command
writes it in the command line at the bottom of the window, letting you execute
again the command and modify it if necessary.
The "History Editor" button opens
a drawer with a text editor that can be synchronized to and from the Command History
but that can also be completely independent from it. You can edit sequences of commands
that you can save for later use and execute as a whole. It's not a real scripting facility,
since each line of text is a single command to gnuplot. If you want to run a gnuplot
program or script, call it from the command line at the bottom of the window as you
would do in the Terminal.
The "Output" button opens a drawer giving you the standard output of gnuplot.
If there are some errors in the commands you send to gnuplot or if a command does
not give a visual output (as the fit command), you can see gnuplot
output here. Also, the "Show all" button performs the show all command and outputs to
this drawer.
In the Preferences dialog box you can select the path to your gnuplot installation.
Any changes will become effective upon relaunch of gnuplot MacOSX GUI. Be aware that
some fault-protection is included into the code, but you may not be given a warning
if you select a path to some file that is not executable or is not a Terminal-based
installation of gnuplot. On relaunching gnuplot MacOSX GUI, the application may crash,
freeze or have unexpected behaviour. Be prepared to force-terminate it in such
circumstances. Deleting the preference file (~/Library/Preferences/gnuplot_MacOSX_GUI.plist)
will restore the default condition letting you launch again the application and
selecting another path if the default one is not valid.
Troubleshooting
gnuplot MacOSX GUI does not launch or crashes immediately after launch
Check that you have a working gnuplot build that can be run into the Terminal.
If you have one, open the file ~/Library/Preferences/gnuplot_MacOSX_GUI.plist
by double-clicking on its icon and check that the path to gnuplot is right or delete this file.
Version history
1.0 - Basic commands for: plotting datafiles, plotting functions, formatting axes
and graphics, fitting datasets with functions non-linear in the fitting parameters.
Download
gnuplot MacOSX GUI
Getting other MacOSX software
You can get other MacOS X software written by myself.
Thank you for trying gnuplot MacOSX GUI.