Re: problems revealed by new demos

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

On Friday 01 October 2004 03:13 am, Hans-Bernhard Broeker wrote:
> *) I don't see why we should need a new term API entry for
>     setting the output.  Yes, the output file is currently a global
>     variable, which is bad from a structural point of view.  But I really
>     don't see why a modification of a single terminal driver should be
>     allowed to change the API.  If we want to change the API, that's a
>     separate issue, to be discussed independently.

That is the discussion I hoped to trigger.
I agree it is not a good thing to change the API for only one driver.
But a change to TERM_TABLE might resolve the more general
problem seen in vector.dem, that the sequence 
	set term push
	set term <new>
	set output
	replot
	set term pop
loses the original output setting.

Adding an actual terminal-specific function may not be useful,
but storing the output fd (or maybe the string used to open it)
in the TERM_TABLE is an interesting idea.  Then each driver would
have its own output stream, and you could ' set term push/pop/<new>'
all day without having them trample on each other's output.