Re: [Plplot-devel] Fixed alignment for single glyphs plotted via plpoint

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On 2005-01-22 23:25+0100 Rafael Laboissiere wrote:

> Good news: I finally got it right and just commit the changes that fix the
> alignment problems for single glyphs plotted via plpoin when using the gd
> drivers with TT fonts.  See my last CVS commit for details.
>
> Example x01c produces now a correct png output. This was the last
> showstopper preventing all of our demos in plplot.sf.net to be generated
> with -dev png -drvopt text,smooth.

Thanks, Rafael, for your excellent work.

>
> This brings me to another subject: I am not willing to make the changes to
> the web site prior to a new release of PLplot.  I think it is inappropriate
> to advertise example results that the current released version of PLplot
> cannot really obtain.  However, I do not know what would be the appropriate
> timing for the next release.  From my previous experience, the amount of
> work involved in release management is overwhelming and I cannot afford this
> right now in my free time budget.  I know Alan and I are the better
> indicated persons to be RM, but I am afraid both of us do not have much
> time.  Volunteers are welcome, anyway.

To solve the problem of updating the example png's without leading user's
astray as to what is in the released version, how about making a parallel
web tree called plplot.sf.net/pre-release ?

Part of the reason why the release process is such a burden right now is all
the website changes that have to be done and tested in a short space of
time.  If we spread that effort out over time with a definite alternative
site that every developer can review and update, it takes the pressure off
the RM.  For example, it would be nice to generate all the example pngs for
the alternate site right now, and similarly I would like to put all the font
documentation changes I am currently making onto the alternate site since
this documentation is not relevant to our released version of the code.

Rafael, how hard would it be to have a parameter in your web-related scripts
that allows you to have the option of putting everything into a pre-release
area while still preserving the normal website that users are aware of?

Switching to the broader issue of the manager for the next PLplot release, I
don't think we have to worry about that just yet. I hope we have a release
within 6 months to show off all our sexy new fonts to our users, but it is
probably still several months away at minimum because our code is not in
releasable state, IMHO.  There are code cleanups to do, font transformation
bugs still to fix, e.g., misaligned X and Y titles for 3D plots for gd.c and
plfreetype.c, and the axis label size and alignment issues that are just
noticable enough for my research plots to be a showstopper and which become
really apparent for azimuths less that 10 deg or so.  There is also the
issue of the ps.c bounding box being completely wrong for unicode fonts.
That's just on the Linux side of things.  There is lots of work to do to
make these changes work on the Windows side of things as well. Also,
although it is not essential for the release, I still hope somebody will get
inspired and put in transformations from UTF-whatever to our UCS4 internal
representations which will allow PLplot captions in all languages of the
world.

In sum, here is what I think we should do with regard to the next release.

* Have a pre-release web site for web site changes appropriate for the next
release.  I could use such a site right now for my font documentation
changes, and it would be wonderful to see all the png examples done with
unicode fonts on this pre-release version of the website as well.

* Keep track of font issues and how fast they are being solved.  Obviously,
Rafael has made big strides the last few days on some aspects of this, but
there is some more to do before we can release.

* Once our code is in more releasable state, quickly decide on a release
manager (either Rafael or I or some other volunteer might be available then)
and get out the release within a month at that point before bit-rot sets in.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
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