Grace ASCII Import Wizard: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

You might also want to have a look at the Grace FAQ.



Q: What's the deal with that header file gaiw can't find ?
A: The header file is the beginning of the command file gaiw passes on to Grace to initialize the plot. It should be either in $GRACE_HOME under the name header.agr, or in $HOME/.header.agr. Priority is given to the file in $HOME, so that it can be customized.

Q: I created graphs with many curves; why does Grace complain about invalid colors/linestyles/linewidths ?
A: In the batch command file, color numbers and other auto-differentation options are incremented for each curve added to a graph. If you create so many curves that you reach the limit for Grace, then you get these error messages. You can do something about it though: add colors to your $HOME/.header.agr file, and linestyles/widths in the Grace configuration file (more difficult, but still possible - see Grace doc and sources)

Q: When I try to plot something, I only get an error message about an unkown -nosafe option
A: From version 5.1.8 up, Grace uses a -safe option by default. With this option, you can NOT modify a plot from a batch command file, which is what gaiw actually needs to do. The -nosafe flag must hence be given explicitly, which results in error messages with Grace versions up to 5.1.7.
The recommended solution is to upgrade to a newer Grace version. If that is not possible, you can still correct the problem easily if you can compile gaiw from sources: just remove the "-nosafe" option in MainDialog.ui.h and recompile.

Q: What is that gaiw_reduce script and why won't it work for me ?
A: This script is a shell script using gawk, which is called when you choose to limit the number of points created for each curve ("Plot options" tab). It works under ksh, zsh invoked as ksh (ln -s /bin/zsh /bin/ksh as root), and probably under bash. It can certainly be written in a more portable way, let us know if you have constructive ideas.

Q: How do I add a translation for my language ?
A: Adding translations for all visible GUI items is very easy using standard Qt development tools. You just need to add one word to gaiw.pro, call "lupdate gaiw.pro", then "linguist gaiw_[xx].ts", edit the strings and when you're done, do a "lrelease" and mail us the gaiw_[xx].ts and gaiw_[xx].qm files so that we can include them in the next release. While you're at it, you might also consider translating the documentation (once it exists :-) ) which is written in plain HTML.


Last modified: September 15th 2002