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

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

On Sunday 29 January 2006 08:55 pm, Ethan A Merritt wrote:
>=20
> Here is my evaluation of the state of the code base, and the
> collection of bugs/patches/feature-requests on SourceForge.

  Updated 14 Apr 2006

> Drivers
> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>=20
> Summary:
> 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.=20
> Consider how many queries on the newsgroup=20
> turn out to be from people whose gnuplot 4.0 was built with the
> 1995-era png driver rather than with libgd.
=20
> Issues:

>    + 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.

    No change. Per?

>    + Timoth=C3=A9e's wxWidgets driver

    Will go into cvs when SourceForge gets their servers working,
    which is now projected at next month sometime. Yuck.

>    + 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

    No response. Let's drop this one from consideration for 4.2

>  - Old but not obsolete drivers
>    + Windows is the 800 pound gorilla here.

    Major upgrades from Bastian Maerkisch recently added to cvs.
    No bug reports yet.

>  - Obsolete drivers (any machine that can run these has a better
>    alternative driver). Should we remove them from the tree altogether?
>    + openstep/next
>    + ggi
>    + iris4d

    I propose to remove these from the cvs source tree

    + eepic
	Another candidate for obsolescence. The most recent comment
	on SourceForge (#528909) is a 2002 suggestion from Lars that it
	be dropped or disabled.

> 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
>    + ai
> 	So far as I know, "set term post level1" is sufficient to=20
> 	generate output compatible with Adobe Illustrator (ai).

    No change.

> Bugs:
>=20
> windows:
> #1232950        -persist option does not work in Version 4.0.0 (Windows)
    Fixed
> #1413021        [Wgnuplot] pause 1;reread; blocks interaction
> #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)
    I don't have any idea about the state of these.=20
    Still bugs? Fixed?

 > x11:
> #1376604        misleading "noraise" resource; resource list in doc
    on my TODO list
> #1305877        x11: cursor position in clipboard N/A in Qt/KDE applicati=
ons
    Fixed
> #997481         [autoconf] name transformation of gnuplot_x11
    No idea. Lars?  Hans?

> TeX:
> #1377786        kpsexpand/kpsewhich from tetex are called unconditionally
> #1367060        epslatex generates ambiguous TeX code
> #1356987        erroneous eepic output for ylabel
    I think these can be marked "won't fix". =20
> #1355374        term tkcanvas perltk broken
    This one even comes with a patch to fix it.
    Can anyone confirm that the patch works?

> other:
> #1224391        Linux console corrupt screen after switch
> #1039296        PDFlib Lite 6 output is broken for pipes, stdout
> #596701         tkcanvas perltk problem
    No change


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