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To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
From: Tony Richardson <ar63 AT evansville DOT edu>
Subject:  Re: octave-forge dependency?
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 23:40:27 +0000 (UTC)
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James R. Phillips <antiskid56-cygwin <at> yahoo.com> writes:

> 
> The octave-forge legend command requires tetex-bin.  This came up in:
> 
> http://www.octave.org/mailing-lists/help-octave/2005/4239
> 
> I promised to fix it, and I did.
> 
> Everyone who complains about long downloads should get broadband ;)
> 
> Everyone who complains about many files should get a bigger hard drive ;)

I have a similar gripe regarding an octave dependency.  I have an old
laptop in which I keep a rather lean cygwin installation.  I do use octave
quite a bit, but I prefer to use it with the native-Windows version of
gnuplot instead of the cygwin-X11 version.  (Just set gnuplot_binary equal
to "/cygdrive/c/Program Files/gnuplot4.00/bin/pgnuplot" or similar
in the .octaverc file.)

Because of the dependency on gnuplot and the gnuplot dependency on X11
upgrading octave is painful.  (I don't have any of the X11 packages
installed and I don't want to install them.  Note also that X11 is
required only through the gnuplot dependency, it isn't required for
viewing images, octave-forge sets up IE as the default image viewer.)

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?

Tony Richardson



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