Re: problems revealed by new demos

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Wednesday 29 September 2004 11:42 pm, Petr Mikulik wrote:
> 
> > 'set term table' could take an optional file name,
> > leaving the value of "set output" unchanged.
> 
> I think that's the best solution.

I have been looking at Harald Harder's patch to replace
the existing epslatex.trm with a new driver that piggybacks
on most of the post.trm driver routines.  I will leave general
discussion of that to people who actually use the epslatex
terminal. 

The relevant point here is that Harald introduces
a new driver entry point to term_api
	term->set_output(char *outfile)

and in the core code he uses it as follows
	if (term->set_output)
		(term->set_output)( newfilename )
	else
		term_set_output( newfilename )

Would this approach solve the current problem with
using table.trm?  It would not fix existing scripts, but it
might be more flexible in the long run.

Harald:
	
I have some questions about your new terminal entry.

Right now it is permitted (though discouraged) to call
'set output'  before calling 'set term'.   Would we have to 
forbid this absolutely?

Would it be possible to separate the file descriptor opened
by (term->set_output) from the one opened by term_set_output?
That way a terminal with a private version of the routine
would not destroy the current setting of "set output <foo>",
which is the issue being raised by the example in vector.dem


-- 
Ethan A Merritt       merritt@u.washington.edu
Biomolecular Structure Center
Mailstop 357742
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195