This is gnuplot version 6.0.4 -- binary release for OS/2
========================================================


0) Important information on this gnuplot binary 
===============================================

This is a binary release of the 6.0.4 version for OS/2.

Version 5.4.2 introduced major changes to the OS/2 version, see below.
Bugs should preferrably be reported using the SourceForge bug tracker at 
  https://sourceforge.net/p/gnuplot/bugs/

This binary was compiled using Eberhard Mattes' EMX 0.9d fix 04 and 
Andrew Zabolotny's port of gcc 3.2.1. (Compilation with gcc 9 / kLIBC is
also supported since version 5.5.)

The binary includes most relevant terminals. It was compiled with gdlib 2.2.5,
libpng 1.6.28, zlib 1.2.11, libjpeg 6b, and freetype 2.9.1.  It includes 
support for iconv using Ilya Zakharevich's iconv2 library 0.2.1a, and for lua
using version 5.1.5.

For general NEWS on this version, see the corresponding file. Here we list some
changes *specific* to the OS/2 version and the pm terminal:

Version 6.0.4 (since 5.5)
  NEW    support mouse input anytime: during "pause", "load" and "pause mouse" 
  NEW    bilevel transparency for RGBA images
  NEW    support "toggling" plots by mouse, key, or command
  NEW    link with AMOS and libcerf libraries
  NEW    optional compilation with gcc 9 using kLIBC
  CHANGE true bold and italic fonts
  CHANGE activate mouse by default as on other platforms
  CHANGE status bar to diplay status text
  CHANGE use the standard font dialog (again) to select fonts

Version 5.4.2
  NEW    new terminal options linewidth, pointsize, and fontscale
  NEW    draw RGBA image disregarding the alpha channel
  NEW    draw coordinates during zooming with mouse
  NEW    line-to-ruler feature
  NEW    Unicode escape sequences when using utf8 encoding
  NEW    support 64bit integers
  CHANGE cosmetic changes to dialogs
  CHANGE colors are mapped to gray when color mode is deselected
  CHANGE revised gnupmdrv help
  CHANGE new parser for terminal options
  FIX    fix long-standing bug which prevented drawing of "large" images, e.g.
           RGB exceeding ~200x200 pixels
  FIX    many fixes to font selection
  FIX    pause command listens to stdin if gnuplot input is redirected
  FIX    prevent segfault when resizing or moving other windows over gnupmdrv
  FIX    fix ancient bug in IPC which lead to missed characters on the command line
  FIX    a few more fixes to wide line support
  FIX    pass current character size information to gnuplot core

Version 5.2.7
  NEW    (simulated) bold and italic text
  NEW    extended support for encodings, including UTF-8
  NEW    dashtype support
  NEW    default font terminal option
  CHANGE apply fill style to polygons
  CHANGE apply RGB colors to filled boxes
  FIX    ignore alpha component of RGBA colors
  FIX    many fixes to wide line support
  FIX    several mouse and menu related fixes

Known pm terminal bugs or limitations:

  In contrast to older releases, "wide lines" in 5.4 really enables
  changeable line thickness. Since 6.0 variable line width is always
  enabled and the meaning of the "wide" option will matches the
  documentation again.

  gnuplot won't recover if gnupmdrv is closed e.g. due to a crash.

  terminal options override GUI settings and changes there (wide, font),
  in particular also the one saved to the profile.

  There is no support for boxed text, nor hypertext.
  No custom dash patterns and dash patterns do not scale with linewidth.
  Limited transparency / no alpha channel support.

Other known bugs and limitations:

  "pause" cannot be (reliably) interrupted with Ctrl-C.

  cairo terminals (pngcairo, pdfcairo, webp) are not available since the
        port of the pango lib is broken.

  After raising the command line window, the first keyboard input might
        get lost.


1) Introduction
===============

gnuplot offers a command line interface of and graphics output is displayed
in a Presentation Manager or X11 window. The gnuplot command line appears
in a text-mode window on the screen.

The PM window has facilities for printing the plot on the default printer,
for changing the fonts used on the plot, and for switching between different
ways of plotting the lines (with color, "wide" lines).

Multiple graph windows are supported, see "help term pm".

The command line window offers the usual gnuplot interface. Both Unix-style
and DOS-style editing keys are supported.

This build supports the shell command (type 'exit' to return to gnuplot), can
pipe data from external commands using '<', and supports command-line
substitution. It runs the full set of demonstration programs supplied in the
gnuplot source code distribution. (With the exception of the currently 
unsupported special function demos and an out-of-memory condition in 
hidden-compare.dem.)

In comparison to version 4.6, the pm driver was largely improved to support
polygon filling with patterns, dashed lines, bold and italic text and more text
encodings, including UTF-8 (see e.g. "utf8.dem"). Mouse support is extended to 
support commands during pause and the "pause mouse" command, as well as 
display of zoom coordinates and the line-to-ruler feature. In monochrome mode,
colors are now mapped to gray.
In version 5.4, the parser for terminal arguments was replaced. This also
enables the `set termoption` command. The terminal now supports a "font" option
to select a default font.
Also the x11 driver was fixed.
The documentation in gnuplot.inf was improved to include graphics.

For news on general changes see the RELEASE_NOTES, and NEWS files.


2) Installation
===============

Most required DLLs are included in the package, but you still need the
EMX libraries.

Unzip the gnuplot distribution into a directory in the PATH, or unzip it
somewhere and add this path to PATH, e.g.
	SET PATH=...;C:\Apps\gnuplot\bin

gnuplot can be run from the command line of an OS/2 session (preferably a
windowed command session, so that the command line and the displayed graph
can be viewed at the same time), or can be set up as a program object in the
WPS. The supplied makeobjects.cmd script will create two objects on the
desktop for the program and the help book.

If gnuplot is set up as a program object, it can be configured for 'drag and
drop' in the usual way, by specifying '%*' as the program parameter.

Environment settings: see manual (or 'help environment' in gnuplot)

* PATH -- see above

* SET GNUPLOT=<some directory>   
    -- directory containing GNUPLOT.INI file, run at start-up.

* SET GNUHELP=<path>\GNUPLOT.GIH
    -- path to gnuplot help file, if not in same directory as gnuplot.exe.
  
* Variable GNUPLOT_LIB may be used to define additional search directories for
  data and command files. The variable may contain a single directory name, or
  a list of directories separated by a platform-specific path separator, i.e.
  ':' on Unix, or ';' on DOS/Windows/OS/2/Amiga platforms. The contents of
  GNUPLOT_LIB are appended to the `loadpath` variable, but not saved with the
  `save` and `save set` commands. See 'help loadpath' for more details.

* Variable GDFONTPATH is the directory where the png/jpeg/gif terminals look for
  (TrueType or other) fonts. The included gd library uses a default of "C:\\PSFONTS"
  Usually, it is
	SET GDFONTPATH=C:/PSFONTS
	SET GDFONTPATH=C:/OS2/MDOS/WINOS2/SYSTEM
  The default font for of the gdlib based terminal can be changed via the
  environment variable GNUPLOT_DEFAULT_GDFONT; however, it is preferred to change
  the font via the "set terminal png font '<font>'" command.

* The variable GNUPLOT_FONTPATH is used by the postscript driver as search path
  for fonts. Set it to
	SET GNUPLOT_FONTPATH=...as above...

See also "help environment" and the supplied "startgp.cmd" script.


3) Running gnuplot
==================

gnuplot can be run from the command line of an OS/2 session (preferably a
windowed command session, so that the command line and the displayed graph
can be viewed at the same time), or can be set up as a program object in the
WPS.

gnuplot starts up as a command line session which accepts the usual gnuplot
input. The Presentation Manager window for graphics display is only opened
when the first 'plot' or 'splot' command is executed.

If gnuplot is set up as a program object, it can be configured for 'drag and
drop' in the usual way, by specifying '%*' as the program parameter.

The PM window has facilities for printing the plot, for changing the fonts
used in the plot, and so on. These of course are handled through the usual
PM interface. In addition, you can 'drop' a font onto the window to change
the font.

The PM terminal supports mousing and hotkeys (for very long time actually --
since 1998).

The usual gnuplot commands can also be used to produce output on supported
devices.

Settings and the positions and sizes of the windows can be saved in the file
gnupmdrv.ini. This file is saved in the program's working directory; several
different directories can be set up (as program objects) with different
options, if you wish.

gnuplot can be run with the PM display window maximized: clicking on the
'gnuplot' menu item (or pressing 'ESC') will bring the gnuplot window to the
foreground; it will disappear again when plotting begins.

gnuplot itself communicates with the PM display window (which is a separate
program) through a named pipe. Plotting commands are sent to the PM window
which produces the plot when all commands have been received.


4) gnupmdrv.exe
===============

gnupmdrv.exe is the 'outboard' driver for gnuplot. It is a multithreaded
PM program.


5) X11 support
==============

This version of gnuplot also includes the X terminal outboard driver
gnuplot_x11.exe. It is compiled using the XFree86-OS/2 libraries and
was tested using HOBlink/X11.


6) REXX support
===============

gnuplot supports REXX:
Any non-recognized command typed at the gnuplot command line is assumed to
be a REXX command file. If the file exists, it is executed, and all non-REXX
commands are passed on to the gnuplot environment. (If the file does not
exist, the usual error message is given). Files are searched for in the
current directory, and then in the path.

Note that REXX maps all command strings to upper case, so gnuplot commands
must be enclosed in quotes. Try 'testrexx' for a simple example.


7) Crash reporting
==================

This release of the gnupmdrv supports extended crash reporting using the
exceptq library if available. Please attach the trap file if reporting
bugs via the SourceForge bug tracker. 
  https://sourceforge.net/p/gnuplot/bugs/


8) Contents
===========

bin\:
  gnuplot.exe     -- gnuplot executable
  gnupmdrv.exe    -- Presentation Manager terminal driver
  gnuplot_x11.exe -- X11 driver
  gnuplot.ico     -- OS/2 gnuplot icon
  gnuplot.gih     -- gnuplot help file
  gnuplot.INF     -- gnuplot manual in OS/2 inf format ('view gnuplot')
  gnupmdrv.HLP    -- help file for gnupmdrv.exe
  gpsavediff.cmd  -- script to cleanup output of the "save" command
  gpsavediff	  -- as above, but for bash
  startgp.cmd	  -- optional start-up script
  testrexx.cmd    -- simple REXX example file
share\PostScript -- prologue files for postscript output

BUGS            -- bug list from source distribution
Copyright       -- gnuplot copyright
README          -- README file from the source distribution
RELEASE_NOTES   -- notes from the source distribution
README.OS2      -- this file
demo\           -- demo files ('load "all.dem"')
docs\           -- gnuplot manual in html and Postscript format
contrib\        -- few contributed scripts
etc.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The gnuplot team, July 2025
