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

I've installed Octave and gnuplot via Homebrew, and downloaded AquaTerm.dmg. When I try to plot, I get the following message:

octave:4> plot(x,y)

gnuplot> set terminal aqua enhanced title "Figure 1" font "*,6"

                  ^
     `line 0: unknown or ambiguous terminal type; type just 'set terminal' for a list`

In a bash terminal set terminal, set Terminal, set term, (and the same, followed by "aqua" too) etc gives nothing. I've tried plotting again from octave having the "AquaTerm" already open, but nothing. I've tried plotting directly from gnuplot but same problem.. How can I do this "set terminal aqua"?

Gnuplot starting message says "Terminal type set to 'x11'" but no idea how to change it, the previous commands didn't work neither.

Since AquaTerm wasn't installed from Homebrew maybe octave/gnupot can't find it... but no idea. Any guess? Thanks!

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.