Should heredocs be included in "save"?

[Philipp K. J. <ja...@ie...>]

Just a question/suggestion...

I am trying to understand the proper use of the
new "heredoc" feature.

Ethan pointed out (on gp-info) that it is usually
used as part of a command script. That makes me 
wonder whether the contents of a heredoc should be 
included in the information that is written to file
using "save".

My rationale is this: traditionally, "save" 
persisted the entire session state (excluding
terminal settings). Loading the resulting file
with "load" recreated the entire session, even
if gnuplot had been exited and restarted in the
meantime.

Now I imagine an interactive session, in which
I define a heredoc (to add some points to a graph,
for example). Now doing a "save", exit, and "load"
will NOT recreate the session, in fact the "load"
will fail, since the data block (=heredoc) is no
longer defined!

I think it is undesirable that a command file
generated by "save" will fail to "load". Moreover,
I strongly think that "re-creatibility" of a plot
is an essential feature. But currently, plots
involving interactively defined heredocs are not
recreateable. 

More broadly speaking, I am wondering about the
strategic intent/direction for heredocs. For
instance, I would expect to be able to load a 
data file into a heredoc "variable", so that I 
then don't have to touch the underlying file again.
Currently, their primary purpose seems to be to 
embed  data in command (demo?) files - which is 
not exactly a feature most users need every day.

Best,

		Ph.