Re: [Plplot-general] Mixing float and double in plplot

[David M. <da...@as...>]

Hi, Alan,

Thanks for confirming that for me.

On Jan 2, 2010, at 8:13 , Alan W. Irwin wrote:

> I would suggest you use the default (double precision) build
> (with appropriate casts of that part of your data that is single- 
> precision
> to double precision) since the default build is the one that has  
> the most
> consistent testing.

This might be veering off into a topic more suitable for the plplot- 
devel list, but if a relatively small subset of functions had two  
different versions (one for single precision, one for double  
precision), then it seems like both types could be supported  
simultaneously.  Many functions would not need two versions (compile- 
time casting would suffice), so only functions that take pointers  
would need two versions and even many of those need not offer two  
variants (i.e. float-only or double-only would likely suffice).  If  
the functions were differentiated with a "_f" or "_d" suffix, the  
header file could alias a non-suffixed version to the desired variant  
based on a #define so existing code for either libplplotf or  
libplplotd would be minimally impacted.

I guess this would affect the driver interface as well, so perhaps it  
would be a non-trivial change, but it would provide the benefit of  
being able to plot both types of data "natively" (i.e. without  
converting large arrays of floats to large arrays of doubles).  I'm  
not promising anything, but if you're open to the concept I might be  
willing to take a stab at implementing it.

Dave