Re: [Plplot-devel] The cairo device results for the Debian testing pango/cairo stack

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On 2007-11-30 14:53-0000 Andrew Ross wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 04:04:37PM -0800, Alan Irwin wrote:
>> The "special" definefont pattern contains the line
>>
>>>> definefont pop
>>
>> where the >> is the end of the special dictionary (font) definition.
>>
>> For debian oldstable, this special pattern occurs in examples 6, 7, and 23.
>> For debian testing, this special pattern occurs in examples 7, 23, and 24.
>>
>
> Following a recommendation on list I've now got virtualbox installed on
> a machine so I can run Debian testing without risking upsetting real
> work. If you haven't tried it - I'd recommend it. It was very easy to
> set up, seems to work well so far and is really useful for this kind of
> thing.

Your comment struck a nerve.  My problem is I bought the latest hardware for
my new computer to reduce office noise and power costs.  That part really
worked well, and I am amazed at the power and speed of the new box compared
to what I had.  However, my new hardware (ASUS P5K-V with Intel g33 chipset)
is too close to the cutting edge _at the moment_ to have a comfortable Linux
experience.  For example, I just finished a successful two-week struggle
with keeping X alive on it for my Intel g33 chipset.  (The Intel engineers
upstream needed to apply a patch that they thought "might" work, but I was
their first real tester so they have held off until now.) I have really had
to stretch my Linux expertise just to keep this box alive.  So I had to
smile when you mentioned "without upsetting real work".  I will definitely
keep the virtualbox idea in mind for the future when I will finally be able
to run Debian stable for real work while also running testing and unstable
for test purposes.  But I suspect that will be more than a year in the
future.

>
> Anyway, I've installed just the basic desktop setup plus whatever
> dependencies are required to build the plplot debian packages. I don't
> see this definefont issue with any of the tests.

Could you clarify some points?  Do none of the examples have the special
definefont pattern or is the special pattern in one or more of examples 6,
7, 23, and/or 24, but ghostscript accepts it? What version of ghostscript?
Are you really running just Debian testing (in which case your experience
does not jibe with mine) or is it actually Debian unstable (which has a new
version of ghostscript which I cannot install yet on my mostly Debian
testing box)?

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
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