[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#677672: octave package recommmends gnuplot instead of gnuplot-x11

[Dima Sorkin]

Package: octave
Version: 3.6.2-1
Severity: normal

The package octave recommends 'gnuplot' as its dependency.
I believe it shall recommend 'gnuplot-x11', because 'gnuplot' alone
installs as 'gnuplot-nox'. Which says that it does not support the
X11 terminal. The result is as follows:

on a freshly installed Octave, typing: 

octave:1> plot ( [0,1],[0,1] )

Yields:
    gnuplot> set terminal x11 enhanced title "Figure 1"
             size 560,420 position 300,148 
                      ^
         line 0: unknown or ambiguous terminal type; type just
          'set terminal' for a list

which means that plotting a graph interactively is not possible.

I would expect freshly installed octave to be fitted to X11,
as I believe that majority of the users will use Octave in X11.

The other option is to document this issue well in the error
message so that average user will understand that she needs
to replace 'gnuplot-nox' with 'gnuplot-x11' to perform an
interactive plotting.

Thanks, regards,
  Dima.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: powerpc (ppc)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-2-powerpc
Locale: LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=ru_RU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages octave depends on:
ii  dpkg-dev                             1.16.3
ii  libamd2.2.0                          1:3.4.0-2
ii  libarpack2                           3.1.0-2
ii  libatlas3gf-base [liblapack.so.3gf]  3.8.3-27
ii  libblas3gf [libblas.so.3gf]          1.2.20110419-2
ii  libc6                                2.13-33
ii  libcamd2.2.0                         1:3.4.0-2
ii  libccolamd2.7.1                      1:3.4.0-2
ii  libcholmod1.7.1                      1:3.4.0-2
ii  libcolamd2.7.1                       1:3.4.0-2
ii  libcurl3-gnutls                      7.26.0-1
ii  libcxsparse2.2.3                     1:3.4.0-2
ii  libfftw3-3                           3.3.2-1
ii  libfltk1.1                           1.1.10-13
ii  libfreetype6                         2.4.9-1
ii  libgcc1                              1:4.7.0-8
ii  libgl1-mesa-glx [libgl1]             8.0.2-2
ii  libglpk0                             4.45-1
ii  libgomp1                             4.7.0-8
ii  libgraphicsmagick++3                 1.3.12-1.1+b2
ii  libgraphicsmagick3                   1.3.12-1.1+b2
ii  liblapack3gf [liblapack.so.3gf]      3.3.1-1
ii  liboctave1                           3.6.2-1
ii  libpcre3                             1:8.30-5
ii  libqhull5                            2009.1-3
ii  libqrupdate1                         1.1.1-1
ii  libstdc++6                           4.7.0-8
ii  libumfpack5.4.0                      1:3.4.0-2
ii  octave-common                        3.6.2-1
ii  texinfo                              4.13a.dfsg.1-10
ii  zlib1g                               1:1.2.7.dfsg-11

Versions of packages octave recommends:
ii  gnuplot           4.6.0-8
ii  libatlas3gf-base  3.8.3-27

Versions of packages octave suggests:
pn  octave-doc      <none>
pn  octave-htmldoc  <none>
pn  octave-info     <none>

-- no debconf information