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It is possible without much trouble to compile and use plt under
MS-Windows. Do not attempt to use a commercial C compiler for this purpose,
however. The only C compiler that is known to work is Cygwin gcc
(which is freely available from http://www.cygwin.com/
and comes accompanied by a complete set of development tools and other
utilities including GNU tar, make, bash, cat,
dd, rm, and tr).
- Download and install Cygwin. In the Select Packages dialog, you
will see a collapsed tree view of the numerous packages available. Unless
you are certain that you won't need them, don't deselect any of the default
choices. The following packages are not selected by default; they are
optional but highly recommended:
- Math/bc
Needed if you wish to use pltf for function plotting.
- XFree86/*
Needed if you wish to make screen plots with plt.
- Download and install GhostScript and GSView (both are freely available from
http://ghostscript.com/).
- Download plt.tar.gz using your web browser.
- Open a Cygwin terminal emulator window (the Cygwin installation will have
created a desktop icon for this) and perform the remaining steps by typing
into it.
- Follow the instructions in the previous section for unpacking plt.tar.gz.
- Enter the plt/src directory. If you did not install Cygwin and GSView
in the default locations, make appropriate changes in gvcat.msw.
The Cygwin installation includes the emacs and vi text editors,
which you can use to edit this file, or you can use MS-Windows Notepad for
this purpose.
- Compile and install plt by typing:
make install
- To test the installation, try this:
make psdemo
If you have installed XFree86, start the X server (e.g., using startx)
if it is not running already, and then (from an X terminal window) type:
make xdemo
- (Optional) If you wish to generate PNG images using lwcat -png
(see appendix C, install ImageMagick (free download
from http://www.imagemagick.org/) if you have not already done
so.
Next: What's New?
Up: How to get and install plt
Previous: Compiling and Using plt under MacOS/X (Darwin)
George B. Moody (george@mit.edu)
2003-05-01