Re: Tab-Completion in gnuplot
Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> writes:
> Joerg Johannes wrote:
>> Last week I helped a friend out with some gnuplot graphs on his SuSE
>> machine. He asked me why I was typing in the whole filenames in
> gnuplot
>> instead of using auto-completion with the "Tab" key. I said, because
>> gnuplot does not support it. BUT -> On SuSE it does!Back home I tried
>> it on my sid box, and there is really no auto-completion. Does anybody
>
>> know how I can turn that on? What did SuSE do to gnuplot???
>
> Quoting /usr/share/doc/gnuplot/README.Debian:
>
> libreadline
> -----------
>
> Yes, the built in readline of gnuplot is bad. However, libreadline
> cannot be used instead because it is licensed under the GPL, whereas
> gnuplot has special licenses (patches only). Linking those programs
> together is forbidden by the GPL. Please don't file bugs telling me to
> use libreadline in gnuplot...
For this reason I generally build gnuplot from source and add the
necessary config stuff to link to libreadline. Steps, roughly, are:
apt-get install libreadline4
apt-get install libreadline4-dev
cd /usr/local/src
apt-get source gnuplot
cd gnuplot-3.7.3/debian
# Edit the file named "rules" and change
--without-gnu-readline
TO
--with-readline=gnu
cd ..
dpkg-buildpackage
cd ..
dpkg -i gnuplot*3.7.3-1*.deb
Then I go into dselect and put a hold on gnuplot so it doesn't get
upgraded automatically during an "apt-get dist-upgrade".
Of course I don't fully understand all the "GPL implications". I
believe what the Debian gnuplot maintainer means is that it's ok to
use GNU readline library with gnuplot, gnuplot just can't be
distributed that way and so (s)he doesn't distribute it that way with
Debian.
Gary
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