## Ploticus build instructions

Version 2.32

Manual page for Ploticus_build_instructions(PL)

Before you begin please be sure you are familiar with the ploticus copyright and permissions notice.
This page discusses how to download and build ploticus from source code. Note that pre-compiled executables are also available.
Ploticus is easy to build, and non-complex. You'll need gcc and make (or equivalent). The basic distribution includes everything you need to produce graphs in pseudo-GIF, SVG, PostScript and EPS, with no external dependencies. For other capabilities you'll need additional libraries on hand (see below).

### Building the software from source code:

- Download the source code distribution
- `gunzip` the file and then `tar xf` the file
- Move the pl___src directory to where you want it, then `cd src`
- If you want the very latest thing, download any posted fixes, and add these files in to the `./src` directory.
- The `Makefile` is ready to go for Linux & PNG. For other platforms and configurations, edit the `Makefile` and follow the simple 3-step install procedure.
- `make clean; make`
- If your build ends unsuccessfully with the message `png.h: No such file or directory` it means that you don't have libpng installed (see Libraries below), or perhaps you have it but it is not in a place where gcc can find it. If you don't need PNG, you can edit the Makefile and just create a GIF-only build.
- After a successful build the `pl` executable will be left in the source directory.. move it into a bin manually, or do `make install`.
- To build libploticus do: `make clean; make -f Makefile_api` The result will be `libploticus.a`
- Set an environment variable called `PLOTICUS_PREFABS` to hold the full pathname of the directory where prefab files reside (`./prefabs` in the distribution). This allows `pl` to locate the prefab files, and other included files.
- See the support page for additional info.

## Libraries

The distribution includes everything you need to produce graphs in pseudo-GIF, SVG, PostScript and EPS with no external dependencies. For additional capabilities you'll need certain libraries on hand:
X11 capability requires xlib. xlib is present on most modern unix systems, but may be missing from certain minimalist distributions. A Mandrake user reported success using the Xfree86-devel package.
For PNG image capability you will need libpng and zlib. Most linux systems seem to come with these ready to roll.
For JPEG you will need GD 1.84+ and libjpeg.
For FreeType2 fonts you'll need libfreetype.
For Shockwave-flash (SWF) capability you'll need ming SWF library. Ming version 0.2a was used during the original development effort.. there have been reports of a function call incompatibility with later ming versions.
data display engine
Copyright Steve Grubb

Markup created by unroff 1.0, `` `` August 23, 2005.