Re: wxWidgets terminal grows up

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

On Saturday 24 September 2005 02:14 pm, Timoth=E9e Lecomte wrote:
> I have just sent a new patch which implements a wxwidgets terminal for
> gnuplot.
> Hope you will have fun with this release, and thanks for your interest.

I'm just trying this out for the first time.
I'll type in my thoughts as I go....

=2D Configures and builds with no problem.

=2D Unfortunately, the x11 terminal doesn't work unless I "unset mouse".
  Something in the new code must conflict with the x11 mousing protocol.

=2D "set term wx" works

=2D "test" looks good, except:
	+ polygon is not colored
	+ rotated text is illegible
	+ text width is not accurately estimated
	+ Point styles 6 + 7 really should be an open and closed
	  circle, respectively

=2D "simple.dem" looks good

=2D "rgb_variable.dem"
	+ Cannot rotate 3D plot using mouse or cursor keys while
	  the main program is in "pause -1"
	+ Requested point style (filled circle) not available
	+ Text and points are not colored.

=2D after "Control-C" to return control to the main terminal window,
  it's dead. =20
	+ Full terminal reset doesn't help
	+ Closing the wxterm window doesn't help
	+ Control-Z doesn't work
	+ I had to issue "kill -9" from another window in order to
	  recover use of the original terminal session

=2D "surface1.dem"
	+ looks good, but still cannot rotate the plot interactively
	+ PM3D surface looks good
	+ the very last plot of the demo looks fine to begin with
	+ now that control has returned to the main window I can rotate
	  interactively, but as soon as I do the plotted figure degrades
	  to some low-resolution grid.  I can't think what would cause this.

=2D "surface2.dem"
	+ looks fine up to the last plot, but if I hit "Ctrl-C" at that
	  point the program segfaults

=2D "rainbow.dem"
	+ The lines are colored, but the colors are wrong. Looks like
	  explicit color settings are ignored

=2D "polar.dem"
	+ Oops, I forgot to say "reset". Hit control-C to return to command
	  line.  Terminal is dead again, and session has to be externally
	  "kill -9"ed.  This is an annoying bug.
	+ Start again. Works fine.

=2D "enhancedtext.dem"
	+ Works nicely except that it doesn't find a Symbol font.
	  How/where does the wx terminal find its fonts?

=2D "fillstyle.dem"
	+ Uh oh. Problems here. Aside from the fact that the boxes are
	  all black, the lower bound of each rectangle is incorrect.
	  The must be a bug or two in the fillbox and/or filled_polygon
	  driver routines.

=2D "test"
	+ Hey! This time I get a red polygon. It was black before.
	  (It's supposed to be blue :-).  Repeated trials turn up pink
	  and purple, also.  Random colors?

=2D "image.dem"
	+ OK

=2D "set term wxt 2"
	+ I thought maybe I could get a second window. But no, instead the
	  program hangs.

General comments:

=2D Looks very promising.=20

=2D The incompatibility with x11 is obviously a problem, but I assume it's
  fixable.  The failure to handle control-C properly is quite annoying, as
  is the inability to rotate 3D plots while in a "pause" command.

=2D The "zoom" and "unzoom" icons are totally non-intuitive, at least to
  me.  They look like the "cancel last edit" and "redo last edit" icons
  from some word processing programs.  Also the clipboard icon looks like
  a "new document" icon - how about using a little clipboard?

=2D What are the possibilities for multiple plot windows?

=2D-=20
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle 98195-7742