=head1 OVERVIEW

Alien::Gnuplot is intended for distribution via CPAN.  This repository
stores the history for the Alien::Gnuplot module on CPAN. Install the
module via CPAN.

=cut
=head1 NAME

Alien::Gnuplot - Find and verify functionality of the gnuplot executable.

=head1 SYNOPSIS

 package MyGnuplotter;

 use strict;

 use Alien::Gnuplot;

 $gnuplot = $Alien::Gnuplot::executable;

 `$gnuplot < /tmp/plotfile`;

 1;

=head1 DESCRIPTION

Alien::Gnuplot verifies existence and sanity of the gnuplot external
application.  It doesn't have any methods - actually using gnuplot is
up to you.  Using Alien::Gnuplot checks for existence of the
executable, and sets several global variables:

=over 3

=item * C<$Alien::Gnuplot::executable> gets the path to the executable that was found.

=item * C<$Alien::Gnuplot::version> gets the self-reported version number of the executable.

=item * C<$Alien::Gnuplot::pl> gets the self-reported patch level.

=item * C<@Alien::Gnuplot::terms> gets a list of the names of all supported terminal devices

=item * C<%Alien::Gnuplot::terms> gets a key for each supported terminal device; values are the 1-line description from gnuplot.

=back

You can point Alien::Gnuplot to a particular path for gnuplot, by
setting the environment variable GNUPLOT_BINARY to the path.

If there is no executable application in your path or in the location
pointed to by GNUPLOT_BINARY, then the module throws an exception.
You can also verify that it has not completed successfully, by
examining $Alien::Gnuplot::version, which is undefined in case of
failure and contains the gnuplot version string on success.

=head1 INSTALLATION STRATEGY

When you install Alien::Gnuplot, it checks that gnuplot itself is
installed as well.  If it is not, then Alien::Gnuplot attempts to 
use one of several common package managers to install gnuplot for you.
If it can't find one of those, if dies (and refuses to install), printing
a friendly message about how to get gnuplot before throwing an error.

In principle, gnuplot could be automagically downloaded and built, 
but it is distributed via Sourceforge -- which obfuscates interior
links, making such tools surprisingly difficult to write.

=head1 REPOSITORIES

Alien::Gnuplot development is at "http://github.com/drzowie/Alien-Gnuplot".

Gnuplot's main home page is at "http://www.gnuplot.info", and the source code
tarball in src is downloaded from there.

=head1 AUTHOR

Craig DeForest <craig@deforest.org>

=head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2013 by Craig DeForest

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself.

=cut