bodegraph on Ubuntu 10.04

Question

I have been trying to get the tex package bodegraph working on my Ubuntu 10.04 machine. First off since Ubuntu ships with Texlive 2009 I had to uninstall the default version and manually install Texlive 2011.

I was then able to get bodegraph to output semilog grid lines, labels, and the like. The problem is when I try to actually plot a transfer function, and bodegraph has to use gnuplot. I get an error saying:

! I can't write on file `gnuplot/test/1.gnuplot'.

test.tex is the name of my input file and I am using pdflatex. I have a suspicion that this has something to do with pdflatex not having the permissions to run gnuplot or to write temp files where it wants to, but I have no clue where to start digging in.

Does anyone have any experience with bodegraph on Ubuntu, or have seen this problem before

EDIT - Include MWE

\documentclass[10pt]{article}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{bodegraph}

\usetikzlibrary{intersections}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\usetikzlibrary{positioning}

\usepackage[active,tightpage]{preview}
\PreviewEnvironment{tikzpicture}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}[>=latex',
    ref lines/.style={thin,blue!60},
    ref points/.style={circle, black, opacity=0.7, fill, minimum size= 3pt, inner sep=0},
    every node/.style={font=small},
    bode lines/.style={very thick, blue},
    Gclabel/.style={text=blue},
    xscale=12/3]

\begin{scope}[yscale=4/110]
\UnitedB
\semilog{-1}{2}{-50}{60}

% Breaks When The Following Line Is Added
\BodeAmp[ref lines, red!60]{-1:1.35}{POAmpAsymp{4}{2.0}+IntAmp{1}}

\end{scope}

\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Answer 1

I got the same error on my machine (Ubuntu 11.04, TL 2011 vanilla). The bodegraph package seems to be configured by default to use the output prefix gnuplot/\jobname/ so the first plot in test.tex is written to gnuplot/test/1.gnuplot. However, you don't have neither a gnuplot directory nor a test sub-directory which aren't created for you, hence the error.

To solve this you need to change the prefix to e.g. {} (current directory):

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{bodegraph}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}[
    gnuplot def/.append style={prefix={}}, % Fixed the issue (prefix was 'gnuplot/\jobname/' before)
]
\begin{scope}
\UnitedB
\semilog{-1}{2}{-50}{60}

\BodeAmp{-1:1.35}{\POAmpAsymp{4}{2.0}+\IntAmp{1}}

\end{scope}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

You need to run this using pdflatex -shell-escape so that gnuplot can be executed.

Note that you forget to add the backslash before POAmpAsymp and IntAmp. I also removed all unrelated code to make a real minimal example.

Answer 2

you have to create a gnuplot/\jobname/ directory before compiling, it's not necessary if you use windows