Re: Configuration options [was: Policy question - to PM3D or not to PM3D?]

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

On Friday 15 July 2005 07:22 am, Hans-Bernhard Broeker wrote:
> 
> So yes, at the moment PM3D is currently contributing a major part to 
> breaking the DOS build's back. For now, I have to remove the postscript
> driver to come close to a   buildable DOS 16-bit version.

Sorry, but I just do not see this as being an important issue.
I frankly don't think that support of 16-bit DOS should be a consideration
in gnuplot development.

I refer you again to the article that Robert Hart (no connection
to Lucas Hart that I know of :-) pointed out the other day, which argues
against spending any effort to support minority platforms.  

  http://www.livejournal.com/users/udrepper/7326.html

and subsequent discussion on Slashdot

  http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/30/2233251&from=rss

The guy takes it too far IMHO, since he is focused on minority platforms
within the  already restricted unix-derived world. But the point is even
more apposite when applied to our case.  We should let obsolete platforms
(Amiga, DOS16) and terminals (ggi, NextStep, selanar) die a natural
death and purge them from the development tree.  Not so much because
nobody uses them, but because nobody is implementing the new features
in these code segments.  What is the point of having a NextStep driver
in 4.2 if it doesn't support any of the features added since 3.7?
What is the point of having a ggi driver that requires libraries from
SCO/Caldera which are no longer distributed even by the vendor?

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