Re: lua help build, autotools update

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

[snip]

> 
> Philipp asked about moving forward with gnuplot.  What I could
> imagine is maybe next summer attempting an overhaul of the code with
> a recent autoconf/vcs(git or hg)/compiler(C++) and better internal
> organization. What currently exists, 5.0 series, could be a stable
> platform until the upgrade becomes stable, which might even be a
> couple years away from starting the effort.  For those who haven't
> used git or hg, I'm certain they'll be happy to be done with CVS and
> maintaining the Changelog file. Changelogs will be part of the
> "changeset", written by whomever creates the changeset (just follow
> the defined format).  It's much easier to browse through changes in
> git and hg, create changeset, etc.
> 
> It depends on how much new features we expect to add.  I can think of
> a few:
> 
> * True hidden surface code.  (I've had in mind for a while to
> generalize the hidden line segment code to hidden triangle surfaces.)
> * WXT terminal as outboard driver.
> * Arrays of plots (data retention) rather than "multiplot".
> * An interactive terminal?  That's been attempted (but not gotten
> very far) going back twenty years.  I've never been real motivated on
> this one because it doesn't fit my method of working with data.  I
> prefer to do plotting as commands, not sculpture.
> * New plot types, as always.
> * Better integration with other programs using emerging trends (say
> SQL or something).

One thing to add: clean-up/documentation of some
of the internal core data structures? For instance,
I'd like to make some minor bug fixes to the kdens
smoothing method, but could not figure out what the
various elements of "struct curvepoints" do and how
they interact (and the preprocessor macros to access
them). 

> 
> Is that enough to justify an overhaul?  Don't know.

Agreed.