Re: new command: raise

[Petr M. <mi...@ph...>]

Unfortunately, my short mail didn't present well the main idea behind.
So, here it is -- the command for raising:

1. It must be easily/fastly typed, as "rep" for "replot" is
   => no such long commands as "s term x11" are acceptable
   In my proposal, "ra" for "raise" is perfect.

2. It must be portable. You should write the command and should have
   the same effect on whichever OS you work right now.
   Thus no "set term pm raise", "set term windows raise", and
   "set term x11 raise", but a single command like "raise".

3. It must impact all screen terminals of the currently running gnuplot,
   whatever is your currently selected terminal (I want to raise my PM
   window even when generating a postscript file -- just to have a look).
   Thus, the implementation I did for OS/2 and Windows is correct.
   Further, there is no need for a new terminal API (yet) -- that OS,
   which wants to support this, just adds its #ifdef.

   Notice that "pause" is implemented in exactly the same way -- plenty
   of #ifdefs (and if you don't know, it usually pops up a small pause
   window on OS/2 and Windows).


Consequently:

1. there is no need to implement it by new terminal api

2. the X11-specific "set term x11 <n> raise" is as long and non-portable
   that it is useless for the proposed functionality (OK, if you like,
   you can add this proposal, but independent from the "raise" command)

3. The effect of "gnuplot -raise" (again, non-portable command, see also
   OS/2 PM menu for "Always on top" vs. "set term x11 raise") does a
   completely different thing (auto raise after "(s)plot" command).

4. This "raise" is completely irrelevant to desktop manager (try to have
   a look to the window title after "plot x" on OS/2 or Windows, not to be
   so much X11 localized -- but, actually, on X11 you will see exactly the
   same window title if you launch gnuplot several times).
   Thus, on any OS, there is no way to find which gnuplot terminal window
   belongs to which gnuplot console instance. (And don't try to convince
   people to use BESTBLABLA X11 windows manager because it may have
   "some kind of such a feature" -- gnuplot is a portable tool).

5. If you still don't see how much useful "raise" command is, then load 3
   similar data into 3 instances of gnuplot, cover all windows by whatever
   other graphics windows, and then try to figure out who belongs to whom...

  3 gnuplot windows is not unusual -- one experimental data, one good
  simulation, other current simulation ... or some windows from Octave...
  and then, you want to raise up just window with the raw data and that
  from octave, but you don't need to replot it (also, X11 are quite slow
  when replotting large maps, so "replot" is a waste of resources). Then
  comes a colleagues and asks you "can I see the curve we are just
  measuring ...?"

In other words, think of "raise" as of "replot" without replotting :-))

Is it now clear what's the reason and necessity for just "raise" and not
anything else?

BTW, this "raise" command implementation for OS/2 and Windows is not
in CVS, it was just attached to my email.

---
Petr Mikulik