If the --with-wingui flag for ./configure under MINGW is omitted (see 32.2.5) or console_debug or console_release is selected in the MS Visual Studio configuration manager, then ngspice will compile without any internal graphical input or output capability. This may be useful if you apply ngspice in a pipe inside the MSYS window, or use it being called from another program, and just generating output files from a given input. The plot (17.5.48) command will not do and leads to an error message.

Only on the ngspice console binary in MS Windows input/output redirection is possible, if ngspice is called (e.g. within a MSYS shell or from a shell script) like

$ ngspice < input.

This feature is used in the new CMC model test suite (to be described elsewhere), thus requires a console binary.

You still may generate graphics output plots or prints by gnuplot (17.5.30), if installed properly (18.7), or by selecting a suitable printing option (18.6).