[Omaha.pm] Preparation for use of GD::Graph & Perl

[philip terry]

Hello,

Can anyone advise on the following?

Concerning installation (on Mac G5 OS X 10.4.3) of up to six libraries in preparation for installation of GD-2.30 Perl module from CPAN (and finally GD::Graph to practice graphing with Perl).
The six are: (in tentative order of installation)
1. XPM  (koala.ilog.fr/lehors/xpm.html)
2. FreeType-2.1.10 (www.freetype.org)
3. JPEG (jpegsrc.vb6) (www.ijg.org/)
4. zlib (www.gzip.org/zlib/) (zlib-1.2.3)
5. libpng (www.3-t.com/pub/png/libpng.html) (libpng-1.2.8-config)
6. gd-2.0.33 (libgd) (www.boutell.com/gd/)

Some questions:

i. Do I need XPM?  It is listed as optional.  What does it do?  Perhaps works with X Windows?  To install it, it asks for "imake".  If don't have "imake', then a makefile is provided.  But, suggests one may need to edit it before use?

ii. As makefiles are specific to a particular compilation & installation, one needs to know information about the current installation, like location of directories to place files in, etc.  It would help to have some experience writing makefiles.

iii. Any advice on what to think about installing XPM in this situation?

Thanks,
Mike Terry