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Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 19:39:13 -0500 (EST)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: Tony Richardson <ar63 AT evansville DOT edu>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: octave-forge dependency?
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On Wed, 7 Dec 2005, Tony Richardson wrote:

> I often use octave and do no plotting at all.  Octave starts and runs
> fine if gnuplot isn't installed.  (It complains about not being able
> to find gnuplot when the plot command is used.)  Should there really
> be a dependency if only a subset of features requires a package?
>
> I'd prefer to see gnuplot removed from the octave dependency list.
> Of course then you'd have to deal with all the posts saying that
> the plot command in octave is broken.  So I don't know what the best
> approach would be.  How do others feel?

Actually, a viable solution for this was already proposed by John W Eaton
in <http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2005-12/msg00283.html>.  Since octave adds
other directories to the path before it runs, it's possible to create a
gnuplot wrapper that uses the real gnuplot if present and exits with a
reasonable error message otherwise.

Just to clarify, the reason I thought it was a hack was that it was an
*octave-forge* script dealing with a *gnuplot* bug.  I don't think the
mechanism itself is in any way hacky.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

If there's any real truth it's that the entire multidimensional infinity
of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. /DA

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