Re: Release plans: Version 4.4.4 and beyond

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

On 09/11/2011 10:50 PM, sfeam (Ethan Merritt) wrote:

> Beyond
> ======
>
> After releasing 4.4.4, I am thinking that we should re-tag the CVS
> tree as the development branch for gnuplot version 5 and plan to
> put out a version 5.0 release candidate sometime after the New Year,
> aiming for a full release in the Spring.
>
> The chief arguments I see for bumping the version to 5
> (rather than 4.6):
>
> 1) The code in the development branch has diverged enough from the
> code in the version 4 branch that most new patches cannot be easily
> back-ported.
>
> 2) There are significant syntax and UI changes already in or queued for
> the development branch, notably
> - block-structured if/else/do/for/while statements
> - nested iteration
> - local customization of linetypes using "set linetype"
> - tab completion and UTF-8 support in the builtin readline
> - reworked Windows driver
> - "stats" subsystem (Patchset #2894333)
>
> and probably more I'm not thinking of at the moment.
>
> What do you think?

I've been itching to revisit the hidden surface issues with gnuplot and 
give that a shot.  If I remember correctly, there was someone from South 
America who submitted a hunk of code for breaking up intersecting 
triangular surface elements.  There is much more to it, naturally, but I 
think using the hidden line code as a base should get us to an eventual 
implementation.  The painter's algorithm of PM3D is very limited and 
just isn't amenable to true hidden surface.

The first pass would be an all triangles implementation that will 
probably be slow and have dithering issues for surfaces that perfectly 
coincide.  However, once that far, input from all developers for speed 
improvements should get things rolling where it might make a good 
feature for a 5.0 version in the six month time frame.

Dan