Plot window not responding

Question

I\'m using Windows 7 64 bit. Each time, I\'m using plot function, plot windows will shows and draws successfully, but after that it stops responding and must shut down it.

Answer 1

Answer given by Assad is absolutely right and worked well for me too.

This is just an Exception Case.

After you type in the Octave command line : graphics_toolkit

If the answer is qt instead of fltk, then probably your PC needs to be installed gnuplot separately from SourceForge as Octave gets some errors while installing itself in W8/10.

Here is the link attached. https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot/?source=directory

You don't need to change any installation files.

This should work

Answer 2

When I first tested plotting an example graph, the graph window appeared but did not respond for one to two minutes, then the plot appeared. Further plots appeared instantly. O.S.: Windows 7 64 bit Octave 4.0.3 64 bit.

Answer 3

So on windows, this worked for me:

Step 1: Install gnuplot to C:\Program Files (x86)\gnuplot:

Download link:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot/

Step 2: Goto below given directory(considering you have installed Octave in C:\ root):

C:\Octave\share\octave\site\m\startup

open octaverc file present in that directory in Notepad.

Step 3:

Add following lines to the end of the file.

gnuplot_binary 'C:\Program Files (x86)\gnuplot\bin\gnuplot.exe'
graphics_toolkit('gnuplot')

Step 4:

Save the file and exit the Notepad. If Octave is open please close it too.

Step 5:

Open Octave and type following command in it to check:

plot([1,2,3],[4,5,6]);

Please note for the first time it might take gnuplot upto 5 minutes to render the graph. So, please do not try to close the app. Subsequent simple plots renders pretty quickly, usually under 1 second.

Answer 4

As Assad Ebrahim wrote, the problem is with the toolkit. I got another problem in version 3.8.2. that the gnuplot didn't work at all. No plot windows showed and a I needed to close Octave. If someone have the same problem, the solution is to download gnuplot and install it to Octave folder. It replaces old gnuplot and the new one is working.

And I thank you for the advice.

Answer 5

I have similar symptoms using octave 4.2 when running your code (Cannot close plot windows, plot takes time to appear). When statements don't end with semicolon (;) the command and result will be printed in command window. It SEEMS to me that the command window halts interpretation of code and wait for user to press a valid key (f,b,q) to contunure or abort execution. The halt point is dependent on previously executed code and size of command window, therefore the intermittent nature of these symptoms.

Solution:

Option 1: Go to command window and keep pressing f (forward)

Option 2: Use semicolon to terminate statements

x = linspace(0,1,10);
y = x.^2;
plot(x,y);

Option 3: Fiddle with some command window settings

Hope it helps

Answer 6

The following is solution for plot window freezing when running Octave from within Emacs, credited to John Lawrence Aspden and user2699 from the question How to get Octave's plot to work under emacs?. It's brought here because this question is much easier to find.

The problem might be caused by Emacs octave-mode's --no-line-editing switch, you can fix it by M-x customize-variable RET inferior-octave-startup-args RET and change --no-line-editing to --line-editing.