Re: dashes again

[Hans-Bernhard B. <HBB...@t-...>]

Petr Mikulik wrote:

> After usual "make install" it is not installed anywhere. I would expect it 
> in a gnuplot's directory such as share/gnuplot/4.5/x11

That expectation is based on incorrect assumptions.

Installing it there would be quite completely pointless.  App-default 
files need to be in a place where the X server looks for them to have 
any effect at all.

> In "help x11", solid|dashed is described. It does not say that something 
> is needed to be installed in order this works.

That's because it doesn't.

The system needs to be _configured_ for that to work --- dash patterns 
have to come from somewhere, and the X11 way of doing such things is to 
put them in the resource database.  There are lots of ways of doing 
that.  An app-default file installed in the right place is one of them, 
but an explicit call of xrdb -merge should be the last resort.

> That's confusing.

X11 is more flexible and more powerful than most of its current users 
are aware.

> But it gets the "-dashed" parameter. I think it should produce a warning 
> that this is ignored because something is not set.

And where do you propose gnuplot_x11 should output that warning?

> I wonder why some terminals support "dashlength" but not "solid|dash". 

Because those are two different things.  "dashlength" makes sense if the 
driver supports dashed lines, but "{solid|dashed}" only makes sense if 
the terminal can do both of those.  Pure black/white ones won't.

> That seems confusing. Should not all the dash-capable terminals support both 
> options?

Only if they're solid-capable, too.