What's left for a 4.2 release? [drivers]

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

Almost 3 years ago, we had a thread titled=20
"What's left for a Version 4.0 release?"
It was useful in guiding the long process of readying the 4.0 official
release.  I am hoping that a similar thread will kick off the 4.2
release process.  I'm also hoping that this time it will take less
than a year to complete the process. We'll see.

Here is my evaluation of the state of the code base, and the
collection of bugs/patches/feature-requests on SourceForge.
I've split it into several parts:
   core code
   drivers
   patches
   feature requests


Drivers
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Summary:
The major changes since 4.0 involved re-working the PostScript
driver and its derivatives.  I think we made a mistake in leaving
old drivers in the 4.0 release, and should aim for simply removing
obsolete drivers in 4.2.  Consider how many queries on the newsgroup
turn out to be from people whose gnuplot 4.0 was built with the
1995-era png driver rather than with libgd.

Issues:
 - New drivers
   + aquaterm is already in cvs.  I have some reservations about
     making it a default, however, because it does not support all
     the features of the x11 terminal.  IMHO either the remaining
     features should be added, or x11 should remain the default
     terminal even on systems that support aqua.
   + Timoth=C3=A9e's wxWidgets driver is looking very solid, and should
     go into cvs
   + I'm glad to see there is ongoing work on an OpenGL terminal,
     but I don't see much chance anything will be ready for 4.2

 - Old but not obsolete drivers
   + Windows is the 800 pound gorilla here.  It has fallen behind=20
     the other interactive drivers in capability, and it does not
     seem to have a champion on the development team to bring it up
     to par.  Can we move to the wxWidgets driver instead, and=20
     retain the existing windows driver only for older systems that
     don't support wxWidgets?

 - Obsolete drivers (any machine that can run these has a better
   alternative driver). Should we remove them from the tree altogether?
   + openstep/next
	I'm not an expert on the history of Apple O/S releases, but
	it is my understanding that any machine these were relevant
	to could now run the normal postscript driver for printer
	output and x11 for interactive output.  I used to have
	a Next machine, and it did work for both postscript and
	x11. But it's long gone.
   + ggi
	Does not link properly against the ggi+xmi libraries currently
	available on the web.
	The basic ggi.trm works for me, but does not do anything useful
	that cannot be better done with another terminal type.
	As best as I can make out, gnuplot's xmi code was written to match
	the SCO implementation, which is for all practical purposes
	dead. And given SCO's claims of proprietary code, it is probably
	not usable anyhow. =20
   + iris4d
	I work in a lab that has used SGI workstations for at least the
	last 12 years.  *No one* uses the iris4d driver, and they never
	have.  You would think that the attraction of a separate driver
	for 3D workstations would be that it supports 3D... but it doesn't.
   + ai
	So far as I know, "set term post level1" is sufficient to=20
	generate output compatible with Adobe Illustrator (ai).
	If not, I'd rather fix post.trm than try to support the ancient
	ai.trm.

Other dubious drivers:
   + svgalib
	I have never managed to get this one to work right, and it's
	a blatant security hole. But I know that some people use it,
	because we get occasional bug reports [which don't get fixed].
	Anyone know of a way to provide a linux console terminal=20
	driver that doesn't have these problems?

Bugs:
Most of the bug reports on SourceForge are driver-specific.
Some are ancient, and some can probably be ignored.

windows:
#1413021        [Wgnuplot] pause 1;reread; blocks interaction
#1232950        -persist option does not work in Version 4.0.0 (Windows)
#982293         can't print color in win32 gnuplot 4.0
#561418         (MS Windows) 100% CPU Usage during pause
#233405         WGNUPL32.EXE crashes when printing directly (Win 95)

x11:
#1376604        misleading "noraise" resource; resource list in doc
#1305877        x11: cursor position in clipboard N/A in Qt/KDE applications
#997481         [autoconf] name transformation of gnuplot_x11

TeX:
#1377786        kpsexpand/kpsewhich from tetex are called unconditionally
#1367060        epslatex generates ambiguous TeX code
#1356987        erroneous eepic output for ylabel
#1355374        term tkcanvas perltk broken

other:
#1224391        Linux console corrupt screen after switch
#1039296        PDFlib Lite 6 output is broken for pipes, stdout
#596701         tkcanvas perltk problem

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