How do I enable the pngcairo terminal in Gnuplot

Question

I would like to plot a figure to PNG format (avoiding using convert), however my Gnuplot distribution does not offer the PNGCAIRO terminal. How can I install/enable it? I us

Answer 1

If your package manager (e.g. macports or fink) doesn't have a suitable gnuplot, then you're probably going to need to build gnuplot from source yourself. Gnuplot itself isn't too difficult, but if you want a specific terminal (e.g. pngcairo) you'll need to download and build the dependencies yourself before building gnuplot -- in this case libcairo.

Gnuplot also has a regular png terminal which should exist if your gnuplot distribution was able to find libgd at compile time or your package manager included it.

And easy way to tell which terminals you have enabled is to just type set terminal in an interactive gnuplot window. That will print a list of all the terminals that your gnuplot is able to use (which depends on the libraries it was compiled with)

Sorry if this isn't a lot of help.