Re: Animations with image size matching output resolution

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

Daniel J Sebald wrote:

> I'm going to consider that a bug and put together a patch.  (So Petr, 
> don't attempt a fix on the other problems I noted.  I'll address those 
> as well.)

I've fixed the pixel size issue.  (It had to do with the fact that the image size is the "extent", not the number of pixels.  That is, the values which are corners really are the outer edges of the image if one thinks of terms of, say, PostScript.  And to confuse things, the corners are specified as ints as opposed to floats.)

Anyway, I think I've discovered the problem with the GIF animations not working in gthumb.  Ethan put the following note into the gd.term file:

    /* FIXME - using the global colormap would be better, but it breaks	*/
    /* if the individual frames specify ad-hoc RGB colors.		*/
    /* Also, the very last frame should be followed by a call to	*/
    /* gdImageGifAnimEnd(gpoutfile)  although in practice it doesn't	*/
    /* seem to matter.							*/

Thanks for leaving that message.  I forced a gdImageGifAnimEnd(gpoutfile) at the end of my twentieth image and sure enough that makes the animated GIF work in gthumb.  So, I think this "it doesn't seem to matter" is not a correct statement.

I see why the comment is there; because the closing of the file is done in term.c.  Now I think there should be, and I'm surprised there already isn't, a terminal function for finishing a file, e.g.,

<term>_finishfile
<term>_wrapup

I would think other formats that use compression and such might need to also have a wrap-up routine.

Thoughts people?

Note that running these gnuplot GIF animations through gifsicle compresses them by a factor of three... don't think that is our problem.

Dan