gnuplot-interface package

Package features

Low level interface to gnuplot that provides:

• start of gnuplot process
• passing raw gnuplot commands
• echo printing of sent commands

Example of use

Typical usage:

(start-gnuplot) ;; starts the process
(init-gnuplot) ;; optional, to initializes terminal
(hello-world) ;;  test output
(command "command-string") ;; send command to gnuplot
(echo-command) ;; sell last sent command

For passing complex gnuplot commands that consists of many lines, use the send-line and send-line-break commands

(do-stuff (action actions)
   (send-line (action->string action)))
(sent-line-break)

Platforms

The interface was developed and tested on the following platforms

• Linux & SBCL
• Windows & Cygwin & CLISP
  • gnuplot
  • wgnuplot

Cygwin and wgnuplot

For use of Cygwin and wgnuplot, one needs to provide the feature :wgnuplot. Furthermore, one needs to specify the path to the executable. This is done via :wgnuplot’s property list:

(setf (symbol-plist :wgnuplot)
   (list :executable "posix compliant path to executable"))

For example, the path can be:

“/c/Program\ Files/wgnuplot/binary/gnuplot.exe”

The double quote of the space in the file-name is necessary.

Caveats

• stream plumbing is not thoroughly tested
• windows management is not implemented

To do

• multiple windows management
• Figure out how to use clisp’s ext:run-program instead of ext:make-pipe-io-stream
  • That would allow me to use the external-program package