Re: Consistent naming scheme for cairo-based terminals

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

On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Allin Cottrell wrote:

> On Sun, 30 Sep 2007, Petr Mikulik wrote:
> 
> > > So I propose that we rename the two cairo based terminals, and any future 
> > > ones, to use instead the names
> > > 	set term pdfcairo
> > > 	set term pngcairo
> > 
> > I like this naming as well.
> 
> Hmm.  Given the pace of gnuplot development at present (in itself, 
> very good) it seems that quite a few people are using CVS gnuplot.
> So backward-incompatible changes (even just backward-incompatible 
> with prior CVS) seems to me better avoided, if possible.

Being in CVS only, there is no problem to rename a feature. Once released in 
a tar ball, then it would become a problem. CVS is mainly for testing.

The cairo terminal is very new.

> Is it the case that having multiple drivers for a given target 
> format (PDF, PNG) is a temporary, transitional phenomenon?  I 
> would rather hope so.  But in that case, do we really want to do 
> what Ethan is suggesting?  In other words, it seems a bad 
> precedent to have "terminals" named "<format><altdriver>".

I think people want "command" compatibility. So whatever library is compiled 
in, "set term pdf" should work. If there are multiple possibilities then it 
is better to say explicitly "set term pdfcairo | pdflib | pdflibharu" ... 
but the user must know what he is doing. Having to know which library was 
built for setting pdf terminal makes scripts difficult or non-portable.

What needs to be ensured is that both pdflib and pdfcairo terminals take the 
same options (but they can (silently? warning?) ignore some of them).

---
PM