Help/PloticusPlugin

The Ploticus plugin passes all its arguments to the Ploticus binary and displays the result as PNG, GIF, EPS, SVG, SVGZ or SWF. Ploticus is a free, GPL, non-interactive software package for producing plots, charts, and graphics from data. See http://ploticus.sourceforge.net/doc/welcome.html

Ploticus uses a cache expire date of days.

Usage

<<Ploticus device||=png [ploticus options...]
     multiline ploticus script ...
>>

or without any script: (not tested)

<<Ploticus -prefab vbars
        data=myfile.dat delim=tab y=1
        clickmapurl="http://mywiki.url/wiki/?pagename=@2"
        clickmaplabel="@3" -csmap
>>

TODO: PloticusSql - create intermediate data from SQL. Similar to SqlResult plugin, just in graphic form. For example to produce nice looking pagehit statistics or ratings statistics. Ploticus has its own sql support within #getproc data, but this would expose security information.

Arguments

Argument	Description	Default value
device	gif, png, jpeg, svg, svgz, eps, swf. Any -T parameter supported by Ploticus.	png
data	optionally add data by <!plugin-list !> pagelist plugins. See Help:WikiPlugin
alt	alt text for the image
-prefab	use the given prefab script (may need PLOTICUS_PREFABS)
-csmap	If a clickable map should be produced (not yet tested) passed to Ploticus as -csmap -mapfile $tempfile.map
help	Show a help screen

All other arguments are used as source to Ploticus.

Known Problems

For Windows you need either a gd library with GIF support or a Ploticus with PNG support. This comes only with the Cygwin build so far.

Optional Configuration

config.ini

PLOTICUS_EXE = pl.exe (on windows) PLOTICUS_EXE = /usr/local/bin/pl (elsewhere)

prefabs need the environment variable PLOTICUS_PREFABS. Default: /usr/share/ploticus. Maybe also set by the config variable PLOTICUS_PREFABS.

See also Help:WikiPluginCached options in config.ini.

Examples

Plugin Ploticus failed. sh: /usr/local/bin/pl: not found
PhpWiki Warning: (2, unlink(/tmp/cache/Ploticusgd2hbW.pl): No such file or directory, /var/www/phpwiki/lib/plugin/Ploticus.php, 279)
PhpWiki Warning: (2, unlink(/tmp/cache/Ploticusgd2hbW): No such file or directory, /var/www/phpwiki/lib/plugin/Ploticus.php, 280)
PhpWiki Warning: (512, Ploticus error: outputfile “/tmp/cache/Ploticusgd2hbW.png” not created cmd-line: cat script | /usr/local/bin/pl -png -o /tmp/cache/Ploticusgd2hbW.png, /var/www/phpwiki/lib/WikiPluginCached.php, 920)

The pie chart above was produced by this code from the Ploticus testsuite:

<<Ploticus device||=png alt="Sample Pie Chart"
#proc page
#if @DEVICE in gif,png
  scale: 0.7
#endif

//  specify data using {proc getdata}
#proc getdata
data:   Brazil 22
        Columbia 17
        "Costa Rica" 22
        Guatemala 3
        Honduras 12
        Mexico 14
        Nicaragua 28
        Belize 9
         United\nStates 21
        Canada 8

//  render the pie graph using {proc pie}
#proc pie
firstslice: 90
explode: .2 0 0 0 0  .2 0
datafield: 2
labelfield: 1
labelmode: line+label
center: 4 4
radius: 2
colors: yellow pink pink pink pink yellow pink
labelfarout: 1.05
>>

Author

• Reini Urban

See Also

• Help:GraphVizPlugin