Octave-Gnuplot-AquaTerm error: set terminal aqua enhanced title "Figure 1"...unknown terminal type"

I had to add setenv("GNUTERM","X11") to OCTAVE_HOME/share/octave/site/m/startup/octaverc (OCTAVE_HOME usually is /usr/local) to make it work permanently.

Solution found and more details on: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-apps-games/242997-plots-octave-dont-work.html

I've ran into a similar issue with Octave-cli, version 3.8.0, on OS X 10.9.1. Observing how Octave-gui could still plot charts, and reading up the answer with octaverc, I've got plotting to work from Octave-cli by adding a line with setenv("GNUTERM","qt") to /usr/local/octave/3.8.0/share/octave/site/m/startup/octaverc

I didn't have to re-install gnuplot or other dependencies.

Setting the terminal type to x11 would solve the problem, but if you want to get AquaTerm working with gnuplot here's how:

First we need to uninstall the existing installation of gnuplot, open up a terminal and run this command.

brew uninstall gnuplot

Download AquaTerm from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/aquaterm/ and install as you would any OSX application.

From here on, there are two ways to get gnuplot happy with aquaterm, Method 1 is easier, but didn't work for me because my AquaTerm installation didn't create the correct symlinks in /usr/local/lib, Method 2 is the one that worked for me, and I am sharing the steps I took to get it working.

Method 1: Simply reinstall gnuplot after installing AquaTerm seems to fix this issue for people.

brew install gnuplot

Go to the verify step to see if everything worked, if not, follow method 2

Method 2: This method is more advanced, but guaranteed to work if you are patient.

Essentially gnuplot cannot locate the AquaTerm library files, that's why aqua doesn't show up as a terminal type option after we installed gnuplot. We need to modify the homebrew recipe for gnuplot to enable aquaterm support, open up the brew recipe for gnuplot by typing:

brew edit gnuplot

And add these lines as shown in this github commit message, this will enable the brew option for gnuplot to include aquaterm https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/14647#issuecomment-21132477

Check to see if the proper AquaTerm library symlinks exist by doing these checks:

ls /usr/local/lib/libaquaterm*
ls /usr/local/include/aquaterm/*

The first line above should return some *.dylib files, the second line above should return some *.h files, if they do not exist run these commands from terminal:

sudo ln -s /Library/Frameworks/AquaTerm.framework/Versions/A/AquaTerm /usr/local/lib/libaquaterm.dylib
sudo ln -s /Library/Frameworks/AquaTerm.framework/Versions/A/AquaTerm /usr/local/lib/libaquaterm.1.0.0.dylib
sudo ln -s /Library/Frameworks/AquaTerm.framework/Versions/A/Headers/* /usr/local/include/aquaterm/.

This is necessary sometimes as the installer for AquaTerm can't create the symlinks in the correct places due to permission issues. Once the /usr/local/ symlinks are created, reinstall gnuplot like this:

brew install gnuplot --with-aquaterm # (formerly --aquaterm in old versions)

Verify that gnuplot can see aquaterm using the steps below and happy plotting!

---

Verify: that gnuplot was configured with AquaTerm correctly by launching gnuplot in terminal

gnuplot

Type this in the gnuplot terminal

gnuplot> set term

Look for the line

Available terminal types:
         aqua  Interface to graphics terminal server for Mac OS X
         ...

If you see the that line above, then you are done, gnuplot is configured correctly and everybody's happy.