Chapter 10. Questions and Answers

10.1. On which platforms LabPlot runs?
10.2. Will LabPlot run native on AMD64 (x86_64) archictures?
10.3. After compiling and starting LabPlot i only see a "File" and a "Help" menu. The toolbars are completly empty. Whats wrong?
10.4. How do i export the active worksheet as image?
10.5. Some analysis functions are not working. What can i do?
10.6. How do i use LabPlot objects,plots,etc. in my own application?
10.7. I miss an important feature. What can i do?
10.8. I want to help. How can i contribute to LabPlot?
10.1.

On which platforms LabPlot runs?

LabPlot is developed for Unix plattforms and uses the QT toolkit and KDE. Normally you can expect LabPlot to build and run on every platform KDE (>=3) supports. A recent list of supported platforms and tips for compiling and running LabPlot can be found on http://staff.mbi-berlin.de/gerlach/Linux/LabPlot/download.html.

I personally have access and can support the following platforms :

  • SuSE 9.2

  • SuSE 9.1 (main development platform)

  • Fedora Core 3

  • RedHat 9

  • Mandrake 10.1

  • Mandrake 10.0

  • Slackware 10

  • Xandros 2.0

  • Gentoo 2004.2

With the help from some volunteers the following platforms are also known to work :
  • Debian 3.0

  • FreeBSD 4,5

  • PLD 2.0

If you like to test and compile LabPlot on any other platform (like Solaris, Fedora Core 2, etc.), please let me know. If you encounter any problem during compilation i can hopefully help.

10.2.

Will LabPlot run native on AMD64 (x86_64) archictures?

I hope so. Unfortunately i have no AMD64 system available to test this feature but with the "--build=x86-linux-gnu" option of configure you should be able to compile LabPlot on Athlon64/Opteron systems too. If that fails just compile it as native i386 (32 bit). That should certainly work.

10.3.

After compiling and starting LabPlot i only see a "File" and a "Help" menu. The toolbars are completly empty. Whats wrong?

LabPlot uses the standard way for creating the graphical user interface (GUI) of KDE applications. The GUI of LabPlot is descriped in the file "LabPlotui.rc" which needs to be installed in the correct KDE path so that KDE can build the menu, the toolbars, etc. On normal KDE installation "./configure --prefix=$KDEDIR ; make ; make install" should put all files in the correct directories. (e.g. $KDEDIR/share/apps/LabPlot/ for "LabPlotui.rc"). Please have a look at your distribution on where to install the needed files.

It is also possible to use a user defined directory for shared files used by KDE. This extra directories can be specified in the environment variable KDEDIRS. So when installing LabPlot under /usr/local you just need to add "/usr/local" to the KDEDIRS environment variable before starting KDE.

10.4.

How do i export the active worksheet as image?

There are three ways to export the active worksheet as image. The standard way is to use "File->Export To Image". All QT supported image formats are allowed. Just select the desired format and the acitve worksheet is exported. The second way to export as an image is to use "File->Export via pstoedit". Here the active worksheet is exported to Postscript and then internally converted to the selected format vi pstoedit. A lot of non-image formats (like PDF or DXF) is supported too. You can select the image size, scale and rotation in this dialog. The third way to export to an image is to use "File->Export via ImageMagick". LabPlot uses the ImageMagick library to convert to all possible image formats (over 200 image formats are supported by ImageMagick). Like in "Export via pstoedit" you can select size, scale and rotation of the image.

10.5.

Some analysis functions are not working. What can i do?

LabPlot uses the GNU Scientific Library (gsl) for regression, histograms, fourier transform and nonlinear fitting. You can use LabPlot even if you dont have the gsl installed, but you wont be able to use the above mentioned functions. So please install the gsl if you want to use this features.

10.6.

How do i use LabPlot objects,plots,etc. in my own application?

Since the 1.2.3 release of LabPlot all classes of LabPlot are collected in the library libLabPlot. At the moment you should have a look at the source packages for the documentation of all classes. After testing how the library can be used i will improve the documentation application programming interface (API) for the library by using doxygen. Please mail me if you have any questions. Additionaly i created a KPart object for LabPlot projects so you can display and edit a LabPlot *.lpl file in your application. Please have a look at the KDE documentation on how to use KDE KParts objects.

10.7.

I miss an important feature. What can i do?

Please take a look at the TODO file in the documentation of LabPlot. Here all planed features are listed in more or less sorted order which i will implement in future releases of LabPlot. If you like to have additional features or like to have a listed feature soon, mail me your wishes and, if possible, send me example data or a short description of what you like to do. It is not unlikely that your feature will appear in the next stable release of LabPlot :-)

10.8.

I want to help. How can i contribute to LabPlot?

Yes, of course. There are a lot things to do. Even if you don't know anything about programming i always need people to find bugs, test things and make suggestions. Also the translation and documentation always needs a lot of work. Just mail me if you need any help.