Re: Octave.app for MacOSX released

[Owen Densmore]

Just to quickly catch up on the workaround which comments out this line:
    cmd = sprintf ("%s -title \"Figure %d\"", cmd, h);

.. I just looked at the gnuplot manuals, both an earlier 3.7 manual,  
and the current 4.2 manual. The statement on command-line processing  
sez:
  "Any command-line arguments are assumed to be names of files  
containing gnuplot commands, with the exception of standard X11  
arguments, which are processed first. Each file is loaded with the  
load command, in the order specified. gnuplot exits after the last  
file is processed. When no load files are named, gnuplot enters into  
an interactive mode. The special filename "-" is used to denote  
standard input. See "help batch/interactive" for more details."
(Note: this is not quite correct .. -h for help, and -V for version  
are also allowed.)

Thus the -title portion is presumably an X11 argument, and thus  
explains the failure I experienced.

If I'm right, this should only be invoked with X11:
  if (! isempty (h) && gnuplot_use_title_option ())
    cmd = sprintf ("%s -title \"Figure %d\"", cmd, h);
  endif

So I poked around a bit to see why octave presumed I was using X11.   
Answer?  .. I had the DISPLAY variable set to :0.0!  Not sure why,  
possibly due to earlier stunts, or use of ssh with the -X option.

Unsetting DISPLAY made the /usr/local version of octave work  
perfectly, calling gnuplot with its default aquaterm.  (Note that  
the /usr/local octave has an empty drawnow.m, thus the plotting  
protocol is handled in some other way.)

Using the MacOSX version, however, I ended up getting text/dumb  
plotting rather than gnuplot/aquaterm usage!  That is apparently due  
to the lines:
    elseif (isunix () && isempty (getenv ("DISPLAY")))
      fprintf (plot_stream, "set terminal dumb\n;");
.. and hence I now understand the suggestions here to modify this  
if .. endif section to be better for the Mac.

Whew!

I'm dubious that checking the DISPLAY is the right way to go.

Does this seem like I've grasped the details here?  I'm an absolute  
newbie with octave!  Thanks a billion for all the help, by the way.

    -- Owen