Re: Plans for gnuplot version 5

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

On Thursday, 06 March, 2014 21:31:00 Juhász Péter wrote:
> On Wed, 2014-03-05 at 15:02 -0800, Ethan A Merritt wrote:

> > > Also, may ask what is your proposed timeline for 5.0?
> > 
> > That's what I'm trying to determine.
> 
> OK, I rephrase the question: what's your latest preferred date for the
> final release? End of this year perhaps?
> I think it would be beneficial if you set a tentative date because then
> potential contributors would be able to gauge whether their proposed new
> features are plausible within that timeframe.
> 
> Peter

Remember that new features per se do not have to go in before version 5, 
only features that would be incompatible with past syntax or data formats.

If the list of "must change" items is empty, then I propose to put out
an rc1 snapshot by the end of March.

If the list is non-empty, the rc1 snapshot would go out as soon as the
list is clear again.

I expect there will be an rc2 either very soon after that if some major
but fixable defect is spotted (this has happened before) otherwise
after 3 months or so of testing and hopefully feedback.

My crystal ball is hazy about where that puts the final release.
I hope well before the end of the year.

This timeline may go out the window if there is consensus that
version 5 should include some major change that has not been
worked on yet at all.  For example several years back Shige Takeno
proposed that all printout to the user go through a translation layer.
The original patch (#436) would have been very invasive, but I like the
idea in principle.  There was a little bit of followup to reduce the amount
of change required, but no one stepped up to organize coders and
translators to see it the rest of the way through into CVS.
If we were to decide multi-language support  is a serious design goal
then I think we would have to either push back the version 5 timeline by
at least a year or set this as a target for, I suppose,  version 6.

So far the suggested list of version 5 targets contains only 
2 items that I see as requiring substantial coding time:
	* consistent support for bold/italic text
	* explicit dot/dash line attributes

In both cases I view the target for an rc1 snapshot as being core
support and documentation for appropriate new syntax. 
Implementing the new feature in individual terminal types can follow
later, just as we did when enhanced text was generalized to
non-postscript terminals, when the image plot styles were added,
and when rgb+alpha color support was added. 

	Ethan