Re: "gnuplot development" page on the revised SourceForge layout

[Clark G. <ga...@di...>]

On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 11:34:50 -0800, "Ethan A Merritt"
<merritt@u.washington.edu> said:
> Any chance that one of you can clean up some of the
> dubious listing on the "gnuplot development" page?
> 
> The existence of a 3.8k snapshot is hardly breaking
> news, and should not be highlighted at the top left.
> I'd love to see it replaced by a pointer to a 4.1 snapshot,
> but that's a separate question.

Done.

> The "Operating System" section lists us as
>   All 32-bit MS Windows (95/98/NT/2000/XP),
>   OS Portable (Source code to work with many OS platforms)
> 
> This seems misleading to me.  There is no
> 32-bit restriction in the code, and the focus is not
> on MS Windows no matter how you look at it. I'd opt to
> list only "OS portable".  If we're going to mention

I'm not so sure I agree.  We have generally had semi-supported Windows
distributions, but I don't think there is anyone doing regular
regression testing on Windows 286 anymore.  If you'd like to take that
on, we can add that. :-)  But it isn't a matter of there being a Windows
focus -- of course we don't focus on it!  But we do tend to have a
useable version that someone keeps reasonably maintained in binary
distro, so it is reasonable to attract users for that purpose.  Maybe no
one does any Windows regression testing or binary distribution anymore
-- would anyone care to 'fess up here?

> windows in particular, then might as well also tick
> off the categories "All POSIX" and "Classic" (includes Atari).

POSIX: done

Do we keep a reasonably modern binary build for Atari?  We do tend to do
this for Windows, and we have source tarballs for *nix.  I don't recall
the current status of Mac binaries (looks like the link is broken), but
that could be a possible addition if some claims it.  I certainly don't
see deleting Windows unless we really disavow all knowledge.  I think we
tend to have a *lot* of users consider gnuplot only because there is a
Windows binary distro.  I have added the "All POSIX", though ... I think
that is fair advertising and likely to be something people will search
for.

I think the standard of "gets at least some regression testing fairly
regularly and/or is a specific design objective" is the standard to use
here, and as such I think it is fair to say:
 - Linux/BSD/*nix/POSIX
 - source that will work in a lot of misc places
 - Windows (only suitable to include if we also do binary)
 - maybe MacOS (if someone would confirm that this is a platform they
 regularly build on, I'll add this ... in the past, this has been pretty
 touch-and-go)
 - otherwise as someone specifically claims blame (Do we still care
 about OS/2 or DOS?  We do have 4.0 builds available for these.)

We could use a more inclusive net -- I still keep the historical stuff,
including the HPLX port (which I actually use on occassion :-) -- on the
ftp site, but I don't know that it is fair to include that as a
"supported" platform for development.  Maybe a more complete list of
older "unsupported" platforms could be organized, but I don't think
that's the point.  For "development" purposes, I think my definition
above is pretty reasonable, though I'd be happy to hear from those who
have differing views to consider.

--ckg
--
Clark Gaylord
Blacksburg, VA USA
ga...@di...