<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Hi there,</div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">I want to bring up an issue with the perl/PGPLOT package on Debian/Ubuntu. The relevant apt package is ‘libpgplot-perl’. </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">(This came up when I was installing PDL on Ubuntu and getting an unexpected graphics library instead of pgplot.)</span></div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">In short, in the latest version of Ubuntu (>=17) the dependency on the pgplot5 package has been replaced with one on libcpgplot0. <span style="font-size: 11pt;" class="">See</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;" class=""> </span><a href="https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=pgplot" class="" style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(149, 79, 114);">https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=pgplot</a></div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">libcpgplot0 replaces the true pgplot library with a supposedly API compatible library provided by the giza package (see <a href="http://giza.sourceforge.net/documentation/pgplot.shtml" class="" style="color: rgb(149, 79, 114);">http://giza.sourceforge.net/documentation/pgplot.shtml</a>). I can imagine that it was thought that this was a good idea as it is newer, C based, etc.</div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">While it is great to see this active development I do not think this has been handled in quite the best way. Giza is not a 100% pgplot API replacement, as yet. I am actually quite familiar with giza and have played with it. The giza library does NOT implement all pgplot functions and some of them work differently to the true pgplot library. (I know as I have tested this and have also corresponded with the developers who are also astronomers just down the road from at Monash Uni).This is clearly documented on the above web page and is an important issue for those of us who rely on pgplot for legacy code.</div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Also I do not think it should be done this way in principle. Obviously giza provides a drop in libpgplot replacement for those who wants to use it, so how it should work is to make a ‘libpgplotgiza-perl’ instead to provide the option FOR THOSE WHO WISH TOO.</div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">(I wish someone had asked me before making this change, after all I am the owner still of the CPAN perl/PGPLOT package whose functionality this is providing.)</div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">I would like to get this revered. It is quite unclear to me who is making these decisions, I am not familiar with the Debian packaging universe. I was told by emailing here I could reopen this issue</div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br class=""></div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">thank you,</div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p class=""> </o:p></div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Karl Glazebrook</div><div class="" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br class=""></div></body></html>