Re: smooth shading & terminal specialities

[Petr M. <mi...@ph...>]

> My opinion is that this "gppsfile" variable should be eliminated.  From what 
> I understand, the purpose of this is a flag in the main code that indicates a 
> PostScript comment can be added to the file for later use.  This is for the 
> purpose of later running an awk script to look for repeated postscript 
> strings and redefine them as shorter strings for purposes of compression.

No; the term_api.h says:

/* Output file where the PostScript output goes to.
    In particular:
 	gppsfile == gpoutfile
 		for 'set term': postscript, pstex
 	gppsfile == PSLATEX_auxfile
 		for 'set term': pslatex
 	gppsfile == 0
 		for all other terminals
    It is non-zero for for the family of postscript terminals, thus making
    this a unique check for postscript output (pm3d has some code optimized
    for PS, for instance).
*/


> The goal is laudable, but oh how convoluted this is.  Not clean code.  Why 
> not just write the PostScript version of these "draw one" routines with short 
> definitions in the first place?  Plus, why would this have to be done at the 
> core code level?  Also, why couldn't someone just gzip the file in question 
> after the fact?

The code is clean and optimized for the postscript language. Current 
colorbox drawing takes 7 lines for any number of maxcolors, while otherwise 
it would be `maxcolors`lines.

> That will pretty much accomplish this "substitute long string with short 
> string" approach.

This is a completely different topic (code produced by PS_filled_polygon).

> * somewhere in the pm3d code would be this test to check if the pm3d drawing 
> constitutes a flat 2D surface.
>
> * if flat surface, call the "image" terminal routine having a new projection 
> angle input
>
> * For those terminals not supporting projected images, they can callback the 
> routine that draws projected images with individual rhombus-es (or rhombi?)

Thus you mean to automagically change "with pm3d" into "with image" without 
knowing it to user? That's not a good idea I think.

---
PM