Re: Gentlemen, start your engines...

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

Hans-Bernhard Br=F6ker wrote:
> Hello, everybody,
>=20
> this 4.2 release process is taking a little longer than expected.  So,=20
> based on a suggestion from Ethan, I've decided to start what the German=
=20
> proverb calls "making nails with heads".  CVS is branched (branch tag=20
> branch-4-2-stable), VERSION is 4.2 and PATCHLEVEL is rc1 (for now on=20
> both the head and the 4.2 branch).
>=20
> Everybody should check out a working copy of the branch, and test that=20
> it works as expected, on as many platforms as you can.

Works here...

I reread some documentation.  On SourceForge is a patch reflecting the fa=
ct that we changed image code so it no longer requires uniformly sampled =
data, but rather assumes it is true.

Are there any items under "new-features" that we would like to label "exp=
erimental" as we have during the config process?  Most users will not see=
 config results, just the "new-features" documentation.

How about a simple statement in "new-features" about expanded key placeme=
nt?

In new features, how about that "dot size and color" style?  That was aft=
er 4.1, wasn't it?

The following demos are not in all.dem: =20

* animate2.dem (originated for GIF animations, can be left out of all.dem=
)
* borders.dem (that one is inefficient, let me put that in the form of a =
4 x 4 multiplot)
* colorwheel.dem (doesn't seem to do anything)
* charset.dem
* dashcolor.dem (looks similar to rainbow.dem, but slightly different, pe=
rhaps it can be combined with rainbow.dem)
* epslatex.dem (shouldn't be part of all.dem, but perhaps move to subdire=
ctor "epslatex"?)
* finance.dem (pretty snazzy)
* fontfile.dem (specific to postscript, poscript subdirectory?)
* fontfile_latex.dem (subdirectory?)
* macros.dem (this one appears to fail)
* molecule.dem
* mouselab_1.dem, mouselab_2.dem, mouselabels.dem, mousevariables.dem (mo=
ve to a subdirectory "mouse"?)
* starmap.dem
* utf8.dem

It would be nice to move demos that are interactive or aren't general in =
nature to subdirectories and have all demos that are in the base (/demo) =
as part of all.dem.  (Put intendend general, but not working demos in an =
"inprogress" subdirectory or something.)  User who go to demo now and run=
 "all.dem" will think they've seen all the demos and will not take to tim=
e to look at all the demos.  But with subdirectories, s/he will notice "o=
h there are some mouse demos", for example.  Organizing like this will he=
lp developers in the future, so they don't have to ask, "What's this demo=
?", etc.

Looking forward to 4.2.

Dan


--=20

Dan Sebald
phone: 608 256 7718
email: daniel DOT sebald AT ieee DOT org
URL: http://webpages DOT charter DOT net/dsebald/