[Maxima] Issues with the Maxima plugin running draw2d() and draw3d() commands

#1

I have Maxima 5.43.2 installed in /opt/local/bin/ on my OSX 13.7 system. When I call Maxima from a terminal and run a draw[2|3]d command, gnuplot is opened, as it should be, in a wxt-terminal.

A Maxima session within TeXmacs 2.1 calls exactly the same Maxima 5.43.2 from the directory mentioned above.

However, running a draw[2|3]d command in a Maxima session launches gnuplot a in X11-terminal.

  • Why is that?

  • Which command in which of the plugin-files causes the reconfiguration/overriding of my gnuplot terminal settings?

  • How can I make sure that the Maxima plugin opens gnuplot in a wxt-terminal?

Any ideas welcome,
Tilda

#2

Ideally you do not want any of these, but to include the graph in TeXmacs without opening a window as others plugin do. I’m not a maxima users myself. Maybe this is a question to ask in texmacs-devel where maybe the maintainer of the maxima package may be listening. We should however copy the answer here to keep track of it.

#3

From other messages on the forum, it seems that on Mac OS, starting from the terminal or through the menus makes a difference to the environment TeXmacs sees. Perhaps it also affects the preferred terminal? You could try to start TeXmacs from the terminal as well.

#4

For this side of the issue, the answer is using tm_plot and the series of tm_... drawing commands:

There is a thread on texmacs-dev on this topic, here are two messages:

https://www.mail-archive.com/texmacs-dev@gnu.org/msg03479.html
https://www.mail-archive.com/texmacs-dev@gnu.org/msg03562.html

Did not check the svn revisions, but there are two related commits in github. There are also a few examples in the help file :slight_smile:

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#5

You can use tm_plot2d(), tm_plot3d(), tm_draw2d() and tm_draw3d() to create embedded plots.

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#6

Thanks for all your replies.

Is this a feature or a bug? I couldn’t test as trying to run texmacs & from a terminal returned -bash: texmacs: command not found.

Having run diff on the files, the latest version of texmacs-maxima.lisp seems to have incorporated the suggestions brought up in the discussions you referred to above.

Of course, I could use

if I wanted to have embedded plots. However I’m not a great fan of them.

  1. embedded plots extremely bloat larger *.tm-documents

  2. they create a lot of junk files in $TEXMACS_HOME_PATH/system/tmp

  3. a gnuplot wxt-window allows for the use of cursors and zooming, plus save as options.

  4. compared to the output produced by draw[2|3]d from a gnuplot wxt-terminal when running Maxima from a terminal, the design and formatting of the plots created the series of tm_(...) commands are decidedly ugly, at least for my liking:

  • they look more like badly formatted Excel plots, with font sizes being much too large and bold

  • produce plot renderings of inferior quality as the line drawings are no longer delicate enough – that may be fine for beamer presentations but not for print publications.

btw, this issue doesn’t seem to be restricted to the Maxima plugin. I noticed the same “decline” in quality when rendering plots from within the Octave plugin and wonder what is the rationale behind that.

Interestingly enough, running plot[2|3]d in a Maxima session from within TeXmacs still opens a gnuplot wxt-terminal.

Tilda

#7

I found a work-around for the issue that the plug-in doesn’t launch gnuplot in a wxt-terminal when using draw[2|3]d commands. Within a Maxima session I now do the following:

set_draw_defaults(
terminal=wxt
)$

This prevents x11-terminals from being opened and ensures launching wxt-terminals instead.

Cheers
Tilda

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