Graphics in command-line Mathematica 7?

Question

How do I make command-line Mathematica 7 display graphics?

In older versions of Mathematica, "Plot[x,{x,1,2}]" would popup a window displaying the plot w/ some formatting options (line thickness, equal xy scaling, etc).

Mathematica 6 and up don't do this. According to http://pages.uoregon.edu/noeckel/Mathematica.html most of the graphics code is now in the notebook interface, not the command-line interface.

The page above also suggests "<<JavaGraphicsX" as a hack (where X is the backtick character which I can't seem to enter here). This works, but the graphics window has no options, and, when I resize the window, the graph doesn't resize.

Is there a better solution?

My attempt to load Motif.m sadly fails:

In[1]:= <<Motif` 

StringForm::sfr:  
   Item 0 requested in "The Motif` graphics package is obsolete, loading 
      JavaGraphics`." out of range; 0 items available. 
Motif::obslt: The Motif` graphics package is obsolete, loading JavaGraphics`. 
 -- Java graphics initialized --  

Following Debugging a working program on Mathematica 5 with Mathematica 7 I tried loading Version5`Graphics but that didn't really help either.

In[1]:= << Version5`Graphics` 
 -- PostScript to stdout graphics initialized --  

In[2]:= Plot[x,{x,1,2}] 
%! 
%%Creator: Mathematica 
%%AspectRatio: .61803 
MathPictureStart 
/Mabs {  
Mgmatrix idtransform 
Mtmatrix dtransform 
} bind def 

[bunch of Postscript crap] 

% End of Graphics 
MathPictureEnd 

Out[2]= -Graphics- 

Answer 1

If you are ok with getting the graphics as files instead of pop-up windows, you can use Export :

SetDirectory[NotebookDirectory[]]    
gfx = Plot[Sin[x], {x, 0, 3}];
Export["sinplot.pdf", gfx]

You should of course replace NotebookDirectory with something that makes sense outside the notebook context. You can use Show to combine Graphics objects, set ranges and viewpoints, etc.

Answer 2

Currently, you need to specify java grahics:

 <<JavaGraphics`
 Plot[PLOT OPTIONS]