1

I wanted to reproduce an animation file on my system (Ubuntu 16.04) from

http://www.texample.net/media/tikz/examples/TEX/animated-distributions.tex

The downloaded .PDF file shows up OK (so I think my acroread is OK), but if I recompile the .tex on my computer, the curves, shaded areas etc. are not displayed, the rest works fine.

I found warnings like

Package pgf Warning: Plot data file `animatedMWE.52.table' not found.

I do have file animatedMWE.52.gnuplot so I guess that some naming convention has changed, but cannot find out how to fix it. Any idea?

katang
  • 1,429
  • You have to run pdflatex with the -shell-escape option and you need to have gnuplot installed, of course – egreg Jul 21 '16 at 12:27
  • gnuplot was installed, it produced the files I mentioned. The -shell-escape really solved the problem, thanks. Does it have any side effects, on the rest of my document, or I may set it as default? (In my package making animation is a rarely used option, the rest does not want it.) – katang Jul 21 '16 at 16:38
  • -shell-escape is not secure, as you may launch any program with it. So it's better to use it only when really necessary. – egreg Jul 21 '16 at 16:49

1 Answers1

2

In order to produce the animations, you need to run pdflatex (or other engine) with -shell-escape turned on; from the command line it's

pdflatex -shell-escape animated-distributions.tex

Check your front-end for how to enable it.

With this option, gnuplot can be called from inside the LaTeX run.

Beware that it's not recommendable to have the option turned on at all time, because any program can be run. Enable it only when really necessary.

egreg
  • 1,121,712