Re: proposal for cvs'ing 'with image'

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

mi...@ph... wrote:

>>>I propose the patch gets committed into cvs.
>>>      
>>>
>>I must admit I haven't quite kept up with its development recently, but
>>from what I remember off-hand, there was quite some discussion about
>>the way it integrated its binary datafile reading with datafile.c. It
>>essentially blows up the largest routine in all of datafile.c by yet
>>another factor of two, but with rather little actual connection
>>between the new and old portions.  I would have liked to have seen that
>>cleaned up before it goes into CVS, but it can be delayed until later.
>>

I think there was this issue, and the issue about the way a map3d_xy() 
routine rounds, especially for PostScript.  Ethan said he will be 
looking at the routine in question some time in the future.  But if you 
want, I can take a look at the rounding issue and see if one is better 
than the other.  My guess is that one case does the rounding directly 
from a CPU register, the other rounds to return a value on the stack.  I 
could repeat some code to avoid the effect of a double version of 
map3d_xy().  But I'd rather not introduce superfluous code that someone 
later could overlook.  (It will still remain obvious in the code what 
the original form of the routine is.)

>I propose clean up of datafile.c, if you really find this necessary, after
>the patch is in cvs. The patch is quite big, and its maintenance as a
>patch needs more effort than necessary. Thus I propose to commit the patch
>ASAP.
>I think that Daniel should get rights for cvs.
>

Well, I don't know if that is a good idea.  I know the guy.  He can run 
CVS on his own system well enough, where any alterations can be undone 
by brute force if necessary.  But as for expertise of a remote site, 
that's dicey.

Anyway, yes the patch is big and consequently almost any alterations to 
CVS (the common files that get most development) cause some hunks to 
fail.  But if only one function within datafile.c gets altered, a patch 
shouldn't go out of date too quickly.  I would propose that I build a 
small patch to clean up that routine in question.  But some discussion 
is required to decide how best to clean up datafile.c, and testing would 
be required.  I think it would be a four to six month time frame for a 
secondary patch.  At that time, if it looks like a little changes are 
required, which I hope isn't the case, maybe then CVS access.

Dan