Re: wxwidgets terminal

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

Timoth=C3=A9e Lecomte wrote:
> In order to make it more user friendly (but it already is, with a littl=
e
> practice), I thought to write a terminal to wxwidgets=20
> (hhtp://www.wxwidgets.org), a gui toolkit.=20

Somebody else had the same idea recently.  But there's a significant=20
obstacle, esp. in the way you plan on doing it: licensing.  wxwidgets is =

GPLed, gnuplot's license is deemed not sufficiently compatible with GPL=20
to allow linking GPLed libraries into it.  At least not in distributed=20
binaries, by the interpretation of the legalese as seen by the Debian tea=
m.

> be something interesting to make 3rd-party software (like Octave,
> or Maxima) reach a higher level of usablility.

I don't think that adding a GUI to gnuplot will make it any more easy to =

use by external programs, who want to control gnuplot themselves, rather =

than let the user do it.  They already have enough control over gnuplot=20
as it is --- the only major exception being that they can't swallow the=20
gnuplot graph window into their own GUI yet, and that the Windows=20
version offers no access to its command line output channel.

> But I have a question : wxwidgets is a library for C++, and gnuplot
> is written in C. So, can I write a terminal for gnuplot in C++ ?

Not really.  At least the actual terminal API functions (i.e. those that =

go into the termentry struct) have to be C functions, i.e. they have to=20
be qualified 'extern "C"', in C++ terms.

> Can gnuplot be compiled entirely with a C++ compiler (g++ in my
> case) ? Does somebody know a way to do it (I've not tried) ?

You certainly shouldn't have to do that, and no, it wouldn't work.
gnuplot is written in C. Trying to compile genuine, non-trivial C code=20
with a C++ compiler is generally impossible, dangerous, or both.  It=20
would cause a boatload of pain in the lower back to translate gnuplot to =

"C/C++", the strict common subset of both languages.

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