Re: First release candidate for gnuplot 6

[Ethan A M. <me...@uw...>]

On Saturday, 22 July 2023 01:06:05 PDT Tatsuro MATSUOKA via gnuplot-beta wrote:
> 
> BTW, 
> --enable-stable-sort
> seems to be missing on 6.0.rc1 but is active on the dev. branch.
> Is this intentional?
> 
> Tatsuro

There are several recent features in 6.1 that I felt were not yet polished
enough or not yet tested enough to include immediately in 6.0.rc1.
In order of introduction (oldest first) these are

- stable sort guarantees for Z-ordering of 3D plot elements 

- z slices of pm3d surfaces (z-clipping against both min and max of slice range)
  and two new features that depend on z slice code changes:
    "splot with contourfill" (depends on z-slices)
    control over fill border line properties of individual 3D objects

- colorbox gradient rendered as a pixel map rather than as separate boxes

These can be considered for inclusion in a second release candidate for 6.0
or stay in the development version for more work.
You have probably tested the stable sort code as much as anyone.
Do you think it should be added to the next 6.0 release candidate?

There are also a couple of changes in 6.1 that have been marked EXPERIMENTAL
from the time they were first added and I did not include them in 6.0 rc1.
IMHO these should be re-thought and a better or more complete implementation
found before inclusion in a stable release.

- "set colorbox cbtics <linetype>"  (EXPERIMENTAL)
- "using cbticlabels(<column>)"     (EXPERIMENTAL)

On the other hand, some other features that are still marked EXPERIMENTAL
in the documentation are included in 6.0 rc1.
That warning should maybe be removed if no problems are reported by
people testing the release candidate.

    Ethan