Questions and Answers
For which platforms is LabPlot available?
LabPlot is developed for Unix platforms and uses the toolkit and . Normally you can expect LabPlot to build and run on every platform (>=3) supports. A recent list of supported platforms and tips for compiling and running LabPlot can be found on http://labplot.wiki.sourceforge.net/Download.
I have access and can support the following platforms :
openSuSE 10.X
SuSE 10.0 (main development platform)
SuSE 9.3
SuSE 9.1
Fedora Core >=3
RedHat 9
Mandriva 2006
Mandrake 10.1
Mandrake 10.0
Slackware 11
With the help from some volunteers the following platforms (and surely more) are also known to work :
Debian 3.0
FreeBSD 4,5
PLD 2.0
CentOS 4
If you like to test and compile LabPlot on any other platform (like Solaris, Xantos, Windows, etc.), please let me know. If you encounter any problem during compilation i may be able to help out.
After compiling and starting LabPlot i only see a "File" and a "Help" menu. The toolbars are completely empty. Whats wrong?
LabPlot uses the standard way for creating the graphical user interface (GUI) of applications. The GUI of LabPlot is described in the file "LabPlotui.rc" which needs to be installed in the correct path so that can build the menu, the toolbars, etc. On normal 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 . 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 .
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 supported image formats are allowed. Just select the desired format and the active 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 via 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.
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 don't 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.
How do i use greek letters for title, axes label, etc.?
LabPlot uses the font "greek times" which was available on SuSE until version 9.0. You just have to install the package xfntgreek-1.0-560.noarch.rpm to make this font available. If everything works you should be able to see the greek letters (lower and upper case) in the Label Dialog and you can use them for the label. If that doesn't work for you an alternative approach is to use LaTeX label (using texvc) to generate greek letters and other symbols.
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. Additionally 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 documentation on how to use KParts objects.
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 :-)
Many Analysis functions are disabled. What can i do?
It looks like your LabPlot package was compiled without GSL (GNU Scientific Library) support. LabPlot was designed to even work on systems that are missing most of the standard libraries. Many distributions are shipping LabPlot packages without this additional functionality. In this case some functions are not available. Fortunately some programs (like pstoedit or texvc) can be added without recompiling LabPlot. You can always check your system environment in the help menu of LabPlot.
The packages provided on the official download page are always built with the standard libraries (GSL, netCDF, audiofile, etc.). You should use them to have all the features.
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.