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<title>ploticus: ploticus build instructions</title>
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  <td><br><h2>Ploticus build instructions</h2></td>
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  <small>
  <a href="../doc/welcome.html"><img src="../doc/ploticus.gif" border=0></a><br>
  Version 2.33 Jun'06
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.TH Ploticus_build_instructions PL "02-JUN-2006   PL ploticus.sourceforge.net"

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Before you begin please be sure you are familiar with the
<a href="../doc/Copyright.html">ploticus copyright and permissions notice</a>.

<br><br>
This page discusses how to download and build ploticus from source code.
Note that <a href="download.html">pre-compiled executables</a> are also available.
<br><br>

Ploticus is easy to build, and non-complex.  You'll need <b>gcc</b> and <b>make</b> (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).

<br><br>

<h3>Building the software from source code:</h3>
<ul>
<li> <a href="http://ploticus.sourceforge.net/doc/download.html">Download</a> the source code distribution
<li> <tt>gunzip</tt> the file and then <tt>tar xf</tt> the file
<li> Move the pl___src directory to where you want it, then <tt>cd src</tt>
<li> If you want the very latest thing, download any 
<a href="http://ploticus.sourceforge.net/doc/news.html">posted fixes</a>, and 
add these files in to the <tt>./src</tt> directory.
<li> The <tt>Makefile</tt> is ready to go for Linux & PNG.  For other platforms and configurations,
edit the <tt>Makefile</tt> and follow the simple 3-step install procedure.
<li> <tt>make clean; make</tt>
<li> If your build ends unsuccessfully with the message <tt>png.h: No such file or directory</tt>
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. 

<li> After a successful build the <tt>pl</tt> executable will be left in the source directory.. move it into a bin manually,
or do <tt>make install</tt>.
<li> To build <a href="api.html">libploticus</a> do: <tt>make clean; make -f Makefile_api</tt>
The result will be <tt>libploticus.a</tt>
<li> Set an environment variable called <tt>PLOTICUS_PREFABS</tt> to hold the full pathname of the
directory where prefab files reside (<tt>./prefabs</tt> in the distribution).  This allows <tt>pl</tt>
to locate the prefab files, and other included files.
<li> See the <a href="../doc/support.html">support page</a> for additional info.
</ul>

<br><br><br>

<h2>Libraries</h2>

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:

<br><br><br>
X11 capability requires <b>xlib</b>.  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.

<br><br><br>

For PNG image capability you will need 
<a href="http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html">libpng</a> and
<a href="http://www.gzip.org/zlib">zlib</a>.
Most linux systems seem to come with these ready to roll.

<br><br><br>

For JPEG you will need
<a href="http://www.boutell.com/gd">GD 1.84+</a> and
<a href="http://www.ijg.org">libjpeg</a>.

<br><br><br>
For FreeType2 fonts you'll need <a href="http://www.freetype.org">libfreetype</a>.

<br><br><br>
For Shockwave-flash (SWF) capability you'll need <a href="http://ming.sourceforge.net">ming SWF library</a>.
Ming version 0.2a was used during the original development effort.. there have been reports of
a function call incompatibility with later ming versions.


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.ig >>
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<a href="../doc/welcome.html">
<img src="../doc/ploticus.gif" border=0></a><br><small>data display engine &nbsp; <br>
<a href="../doc/Copyright.html">Copyright Steve Grubb</a>
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Ploticus is hosted at http://ploticus.sourceforge.net <br>
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