Does "fit" really need to use the axis structures?

[Ethan A M. <sf...@us...>]

In response to a request on the newsgroup, I've been looking into relaxing
the limit of 5 independent parameters in "fit".

So far as I can see there are 2 reasons for this limit.

1)  df_readline() limits the number of fields in a 'using' clause to
    MAXDATACOLS, and this is currently defined as 7.

2)  the fit parameters can be range-limited in the "fit" command,
    and these ranges are stored in the axis data structures for the
    x, y, t, u, and v axes.

(1) It is easy to change MAXDATACOLS, and I have confirmed that by
itself this doesn't break anything.

(2) is harder to relax if it really is necessary to use the axis data
structures.  But is it really necessary?

It looks to me that the only reason the axis data structures are involved
is that routine parse_range(), which used to be macro PARSE_NAMED_RANGE,
takes an axis index as input parameter and overwrites the 
autoscale/min/max fields in that axis structure.
During the fit operation, these ranges are checked in the axis structure.

Is there some other reason I am missing that requires access to the
axis data structures?  Can we just provide a local array containing
autoscale/min/max for each fit parameter and not access the axis
structures at all?

	Ethan