What's left for a 4.2 release?

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

This attempts to be a complete list of unresolved issues that I see
as release-critical.   It's a very short list.

Bugs
========

#1512210  buffer overflow using pgnuplot
		
	Sounds serious, but no one has confirmed the bug.
	We never heard back from the original reporter.


Patches
========

#1510816  Postscript prologues files

	Works fine under linux/DU4/irix/etc, and OK though not
	perfectly on VMS.  The sticking point is Windows.
	Is this workable under Windows, or do we have to provide a
	compile-time option to include all of the PostScript
	boilerplate in the driver itself?  I'd hate to take what
	I consider to be a step backwards, but if we must - we must.

	On the other hand, maybe this isn't really release critical.
	If it can be fixed by providing a Windows installer bundle,
	then we could freeze and release now, and add a bundled 
	installer on the "Files" page afterwards.

#1505261  wgnuplot: open file-open-dialog in current dir

	I don't care whether this goes in, or gets vetoed,
	but we need a decision one way or the other.


Documentation
=============

#######	 Nothing in particular. Just a thorough check to make sure
	we are properly describing the new version.


Feature Requests
================

#1117724  [fit] access to resulting chisquare

	I proposed exporting user-visible variables named

	FIT_CONVERGED - 1 if the fit has converged, 0 otherwise
	FIT_NDF  - number of degrees of freedom (#obs - #param)
	FIT_RMS  - RMS fit of model to data;
	           a.k.a. "std fit"
                   a.k.a. sqrt(sum_of_squares/ndf)
	FIT_CHI2 - variance (reduced chi-squared residual) after fit;
	           a.k.a. (sum_of_squares/ndf)

	Hans-Bernhard has objected to these names, but no one has
	suggested anything better. Please speak up.

#1513118  Standardize all config and Makefiles for 4.2

	We have set the ./configure script to select most of the
	new features by default.  But the makefiles for platforms
	not using the configure script do not match this (see below).
	Should they?


			Ethan


The relevant #defines in config.h are

/* Define to enable parsing of deprecated syntax */
#define BACKWARDS_COMPATIBLE 1

/* Define if you want to support files in binary format. */
#define BINARY_DATA_FILE 1

/* Define to allow reading strings from datafiles */
#define EAM_DATASTRINGS 1

/* Define to enable histograms plot style. */
#define EAM_HISTOGRAMS 1

/* Define to allow placement of rectangles and other objects */
#define EAM_OBJECTS 1

/* Define to allow 'fit' to create parameter error variables. */
#define GP_FIT_ERRVARS 1

/* Define to allow command line macros. EXPERIMENTAL */
#define GP_MACROS 1

/* Define to allow string variables. */
#define GP_STRING_VARS 2

/* Define to enable quadtree optimization in hidden3d code. */
#define HIDDEN3D_QUADTREE 1

/* Define to enable handling point size in hidden3d code. */
#define HIDDEN3D_VAR_PTSIZE 1

/* Define if you want to have image plotting support. */
#define WITH_IMAGE 1



-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle WA