Re: Bugs in enhanced mode

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

[Taken over to the list, because of the fundamental issue at the bottom.]

On Wed, 26 May 2004, Ethan Merritt wrote:

> I thought it looked wrong at the time, but I haven't had time to look at
> it in detail.

Feels familiar.  I handed out my PhD thesis to the institution yesterday,
5 minutes before the deadline at noon.  Phew ;-)

> In paticular the change that broke things was in term.c:
>     static void do_enh_writec __PROTO((int c));
>   	   /* note: c is char, but must be declared int due to an old K&R ANSI-C strict HP cc */

Ah, now I see more clearly.

But actually, as long as gnuplot is supposed to be compilable under K&R C,
which it is(!), Petr's change did go in the right direction.  It just
didn't go far enough. In K&R C, function arguments indeed can't be char
without causing all kinds of problems.  But neither can you cast function
pointers to functions of a different signature and expect the resulting
code to work.

So the choice is this: either we finally and officially discontinue all
support for K&R compilers, or we make such parameters int everywhere.  

Given all the troubles with TBOOLEAN (which are actually essentially the
same thing, since TBOOLEAN ends up as char on K&R compilers), I tend
towards declaring K&R C dead.  But if we do that, we should at least split
off a development branch (4.1) first, and do it there.

-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (br...@ph...)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.