Re: terminal API: Intent of multiplot suspend/resume?

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

On Thursday 14 July 2005 11:49 am, Hans-Bernhard Broeker wrote:
> 
> So, let's see what my conclusions would be so far:
> 
> * This is not a particularly urgent issue.

Agreed.

> * Removing suspend()/resume() completely would be a Very Bad Idea[TM].

Removing them would save about 400 bytes of permanent storage in
TERM_TABLE.  Other than that it's all cosmetic.

> * suspend()/resume() could help more if they were called in more cases, 
> but probably should not be called in non-interactive mode to avoid 
> excessive redraws.  Benefits could include drivers that want to know 
> which graphical elements belong to which plot, for grouping purposes. 

I am perfectly happy to leave suspend/resume as they are.
The cause of my confusion was the implication in the existing 
documentation that these routines could be used to detect the
change between one multiplot plot and the next.  They cannot.
So I will modify term/README to make it clearer that they 
are only relevant to interactive plots.

This whole line of inquiry started because I was trying to
minimize or eliminate the need for a new terminal API function
to implement Harald Harders clever treatment of front/back text
in epslatex.trm.  I already have a working version (posted to
SourceForge) that makes explicit calls between multiplot
segments. I was hoping to do even better by using suspend/resume
instead, but it doesn't work.

End of story, I think, other than clarifying the text in 
term/README



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