Why do I get the warning "epstool binary is not available", with saveas(gcf,'filename.pdf')

Question

I am plotting contours with octave and with the command saveas(gcf,'rainzam.pdf') I get the output ok, but I was just wondering why I get the following warnings:

warning: print.m: epstool binary is not available.
Some output formats are not available.
warning: print.m: fig2dev binary is not available.
Some output formats are not available.

This is not serious but if there is a way of making them disappear, I would appreciate assistance.

Answer 1

As explained here, you need to install epstool and fig2dev which is part of xfig.

Depending on your system, there might be packages available.

For instance on openSUSE, just issue cnf epstool which yields

Try installing with:
    sudo zypper install epstool

If cnf epstool still yields epstool: command not found, then you need to subscribe to the Publishing repo. The easiest is to use one-click install.

And similarly, sudo zypper install transfig to get fig2dev.

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Alternately, you could disable the warnings:

warning("off", "print.m: epstool binary is not available")
warning("off", "print.m: fig2dev binary is not available")

But the functionality of epstool and fig2dev would not be available then.