Re: Should gnuplot become a programming environment?

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

Ethan -

I don't want to let your answer go w/o reply,
but I also don't want to let this thread turn
into a conversation between the two of us about 
the semantics of computer science terms. I am
not sure how fruitful that would be.

> 
> Obviously you cannot reproduce a data plot without access to the
> data being plotted.  But this is not "state" as I understand the term.

"State" is what is maintained by a computer
component between operations. 

The only state gnuplot maintained between
invocations of the plot command (which is
what gnuplot is all about) was the collection
of the "set" options - and (increasingly)
variables. It kept no memory of the data
plotted - it read it from scratch every time
it was plotted again.

What's different about heredocs (and why I
refer to them as "state") is that now gnuplot
has a facility for "remembering" data sets
between plots. 

(I am disregarding GUI issues here, because
that's really a separate component, which -
as you point out - does not interfere back
to the rest of gnuplot.)

But I really don't think that these fineries 
get us to the heart to the matter!