Re: 5.2 rc2 tarball now available

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

On Tuesday, 04 July, 2017 17:26:11 Petr Mikulik wrote:
>  	Hello,
> 
> I have troubles compiling rc2 on Linux (OpenSUSE 42.2, and some Ubuntu) - 
> linking fails.
> 
> It is this problem:
>      https://sourceforge.net/p/gnuplot/support-requests/196/
> 
> The workaround
>      configure --with-X11
> described above does not help, while
>      TERMLIBS="-lX11" ./configure
> let me gnuplot compile.
> 
> Can this be fixed?
> 
> ***
> 
> Further, I can see that
>  	set term qt; test
> does not pass the test of character width (testing rectangle is too narrow), 
> while x11 and wxt pass well.
> 
> ***
> 
> Those two dummy terminals show 90123456789 instead of 0123...90123...9 in the 
> character width test:
>  	set term dumb; test
>  	set term caca; test
> 
> ***
> 
> Is caca still experimental?
> It's just fun, but it's nice, mouseable and it seems to work, so I propose to 
> have it not experimental.
> 
> ***
> 
> Greetings,
>    Petr

Updates:

1) Auto-detection of a wxt on linux requirement for 
	TERMLIBS="-lX11" ./configure

No solution.  The weak point is the wxgtk3 library.
It has several runtime glitches in addition to this configuration issue.  
I do not expect a fix for 5.2  This is a real problem but I don't see
anything we can do about it other than to recommend against using wxgtk
versions higher than 2.8

2) Qt text boxes

I have modified the "test" command to show both the true bounding box
as used by the current terminal (shaded rectangle) and the generic
estimated bounding box used by the core program to reserve space for
text in a plot layout.  It seems some Qt versions report an inaccurate
bounding box width for some fonts (e.g. Qt 5.6.2 + DejaVu Sans).
Nevertheless the terminal's internal bounding box is always more accurate
than the generic estimated box.

Dan Sebald has pointed out that the Qt terminal and the cairo terminals
differ in whether they increase the lower bound of the bounding box to
allow for font descenders.   This is probably fixable but I consider it a
minor issue.  

3) caca terminal still EXPERIMENTAL?

I have libcaca 0.99 beta18.  The gnuplot caca terminal reports:
set term caca driver list
    x11 gl slang ncurses raw null

For me the x11 and gl options are usable although the x11 font handling
has artifacts.  slang and ncurses spew garbage.  raw and null cause
segfaults.  Most of the time changing a caca option causes gnuplot to exit.
So yes, I think we need to warn that the caca terminal is still EXPERIMENTAL.

4) autoconfigure/compile on SunOS

Minor issues only.  The demo for building and linking plugins does
not autoconfigure correction but can be built manually following instructions
in the plugin demo Makefile.
See also various notes attached to Bug #1821

5) Unwanted inclusion of Type 3 fonts in cairo pdf output

The is Bug #1868.  No fix known.   Not a release-blocker.
It would be great if someone would pursue this with the cairographics
project maintainers.

6) Any other known issues?

	Ethan