Re: Bug report and whishlist

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

> set term post
> set output 'result.ps'
> plot 'foo'
> set term win
> plot 'baz' using 1:2
> (then result.ps becomes blank
 
> This is a rather non natural behavior that must trick a quite a few
> users.

It does seem to be a recurring complaint.
Can anyone see bad side effects if we were to

1) Give win and x11 an explicit term->flags TERM_NO_OUTFILE
   (aquaterm? vgagl? others?) 

2) Modify term_init() to check for TERM_NO_OUTFILEE, and if present
   then *close* the output file rather than re-opening it; i.e.
   call term_close_output() rather than term_set_output().


The following proof-of-principle test works for x11, but I don't
know what wrinkles may exist in doing the same for win.trm


--- gnuplot/src/term.c  2005-04-28 14:34:35.000000000 -0700
+++ gnuplot-cvs/src/term.c      2005-05-10 11:16:04.378445568 -0700
@@ -483,6 +483,10 @@
      * resulted in output files being truncated
      */
 
+    /* If this is an interactive terminal, close previous output file */
+    if (outstr && !strncmp(term->name,"x11",3))
+       term_close_output();
+
     if (outstr &&
        (((term->flags & TERM_BINARY) && !opened_binary) ||
         ((!(term->flags & TERM_BINARY) && opened_binary)))) {



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