pyPloticus is a python wrapper for libploticus. On my Mandriva 2009.1 system I was having trouble 
with an undefined symbol error after compiling libploticus 2.41 and then installing pyPloticus. 
It all compiled and installed OK but on importing the python module from inside the python 
interpreter I would get and "undefined symbol PLGG_pixpt" error.

A small change to the ploticus Makefile has fixed this. As Steve says in his Makefile the shared 
library part of the Makefile hasn't been tested - well on Mandriva 2009.1 at least, it now has.

The key changes to Makefile are

1. Select option 5 by commenting out line 28 (option 1) and uncommenting lines 74 to 78.

2. Lines 223 to 226 should look like this
libploticus-static: $(OBJ) api.o gd00files gd16files
$(RMCOM) libploticus.$(LIBEXT)
$(ARCOM) libploticus.$(LIBEXT) $(OBJ) api.o $(GD16) $(GD)

3. Add $(FPIC) to the compilation of gd00files and gd16files [THIS HAS BEEN DONE IN THE MAKEFILE -SG]

4. Now "make clean" then "make"

5. Copy your squeaky new libploticus.a file to /usr/lib (or if like me you have a 64 bit machine then 
/usr/lib64) but in the process rename the file to libploticus.so.0.0 (you have actually created a 
shared library but I think pyPloticus compilation expects a file with a ".a" extension).

6. Run ldconfig -n /usr/lib (ldconfig -n /usr/lib64 for 64 bitters)

7. You can now go to pyPloticus and first edit the setup.py file changing the plot_src_path to point to 
the location of the newly created libploticus.a file (something like plot_src_path="../pl241src/src/")

8. Run "python setup.py install"

You should now have it all set to go.
Testing

1. Start the python interpreter "python"

2. try to import the ploticus module "import ploticus"
You should get no errors at this point

3. You can now try the pyPloticus examples "python plot.py graph.html"
I get some errors listed but the graph srcc.png still get produced.

Hope this help someone please tell me if you have other errors of if this works for you.