Re: TikZ terminal

[Peter H. <pe...@af...>]

Am Dienstag, 23. Dezember 2008 schrieb Ethan A Merritt:
> On Monday 22 December 2008, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > here are a few suggestions for the new TikZ terminal:
> >
> > 1.) I would rename gnuplot.lua into tikz.lua or gnuplot-tikz.lua. The
> > terminal lua is generic, but gnuplot.lua is TikZ-specific.

Yes.

> > 2.) I would require calling
> >    set term tikz
> > or
> >    set term lua tikz
> > and not
> >    set term lua
> >
> > Lua is a generic driver and would not tell anything to the user that
> > wants to plot something in TeX.
>
> How about using a scheme similar to the cairo-based terminals
> pdfcairo and pngcairo.  The current terminal would have the full name
> tikzlua, and the short form "tikz" would work unless/until someone
> writes a pure tikz terminal that doesn't use lua (just as the old
> pdf and png terminals don't use cairo).

The downside is that we need to touch lua.trm for every new backend script 
then.  What about "luatikz"?  This would call the Lua terminal for every 
luaXY, no? Then the terminal can look for a script named gnuplot-XY.lua.

> > If one writes metapost.lua then one could for example call
> >     set term lua metapost
> > to invoke that file.
> >
> > 3.) I agree that the terminal should return a list of values chosen
> > for the terminal

The infrastructure for this is in, it just needs to return more values...

> > 4.) Help should also be returned via
> >    help term tikz
> >
> > Now set term lua help returns something useful, but help term tikz
> > should be more informative as well.

This could turn out as a real problem if we don't move the help text to 
lua.trm.  And this would spoil the idea of keeping the terminal and the script 
separated.

> > 5.) Maybe there could be
> >    gnuplot.lua
> > that has a list of available terminals, for example a list containing
> > "tikz" terminal with both terminal name and filename that needs to be
> > included to make that terminal work properly.

I think this is also related to the decision if we keep the terminal and the 
script separated.

While I would like to keep them separated, I don't know how to fix the help 
system then :-(

-Peter