Re: accumulated patches

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

On Wednesday 30 May 2007 11:38, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
> 
> [ gnuplot-Bugs-1534367 ] too much expansion in FindHelp
> [ gnuplot-Bugs-1525665 ] help has problems with
> [ gnuplot-Patches-1531560 ] recursive history warning instead of error

I agree these are relatively high priority.
They almost went into 4.2, but were held out because bugs
turned up at the last minute.  IOW they are not quite working yet.
I would very much like to see them cleaned up, thoroughly tested,
and added to CVS.

Please combine them into a single patch set against current source
and let's give them a workout to shake out any remaining bugs.

> [ gnuplot-Patches-1566782 ] use tgamma for GAMMA() and lgamma for LNGAMMA()
> 
> I think it is correct, others may not.  It appears to work on Linux and Mac and 
> I'm fairly confident it won't cause any problems.

It was never broken on linux, and I believe it is no longer needed
on OSX either.  So the risk of breaking some minor platform seems larger
than the benefit to any known system.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.

> [ gnuplot-Bugs-1488168 ] z_floor and z_ceiling based on xyplane.absolute 
> This is an outright bug fix.  Should have gone in 4.2.

Do you want to take this one Petr?
You had said earlier you would move it into CVS.
 
> [ gnuplot-Patches-1523316 ] improved CLIPBOARD and PRIMARY per X conventions
> 
> Full implementation of mouse/clipboard behavior consistent with the vast
> majority of X applications.

???  Not as seen here.  I have had no problems with the current implementation.
That doesn't make your fix wrong, but I don't understand what problem is fixing.
 
> [ gnuplot-Bugs-1004754 ] Tics and grid slightly outside border

I think this is a non-issue, and we should drop this one entirely.

> [ gnuplot-Patches-1027032 ] Connect gnuplot_x11 to exterior application
> window
> 
> Works as far as I know.

Doesn't work here.  I'd like it if it *did* work, but it doesn't.
My recollection is that it tripped over some contradictory requirements
for window management by Tk/Tcl, GTK, etc.

> [ gnuplot-Patches-1723798 ] Multiplot palette X11, bug [ 1447277 ]
> Allows multiple palettes on a multiplot X11 window, a long desired fix.

Sorry, I haven't had time to look at this one yet.

> [ gnuplot-Patches-1725993 ] Alternate Hidden3d Edge Segmentation
> [ 1727198 ] Hidden lines: Degenerate polygons creating problems
> [ gnuplot-Bugs-1728063 ] hidden lines, scale assertion failure

I'll leave these to Hans-Bernhard, since he's far more familiar
with the code.  I will comment that gnuplat's hidden-line removal
plots have very different properties than solid rendering.  When you
render solids, omitting a facet is just about the worst thing you can do.
The missing facet is far more jarring than a mis-aligned edge.
But in the case of gnuplot, it is exactly the mis-aligned edges that
are noticeable.  We don't care if a facet is dropped.  So although
I have not delved into the code, I suspect that the most useful fix
is simply to increase the slop margin, and deliberately omit any
edges that are in the slop area.  

> [ gnuplot-Patches-1508316 ] Allow multiple strings to signify "missing"

Veto.
There are more reasonable options.
1) Clean up your data files
2) Run it through general string handling:
    filter(x) =   (x eq "?") ? NaN : (x eq "junk") ? NaN : x
    plot "foo" using 1:(filter($2))
3) Clean up your data files

Consider the case where you have multiple data files,
each with its own idea of what is or is not a missing data flag.
You want the fix to be per-file, not global.

-- 
Ethan A Merritt