Re: [Plplot-devel] Status report on remaining issues to be addressed for theforthcoming 5.11.1 release (wxwidgets issues)

[Phil R. <p.d...@gm...>]

Hi Alan
Could describe exactly what the -np option should do and also add that to the documentation. At the moment for wxWidgets as soon as a page is rendered we move to the next page, which as you state causes at most a brief flicker of a plot. But this is exactly what the documentation states it should do.

Regarding the warnings, I am not sure what to do. How long do you think is sensible to wait for a response from the viewer? This is a balance, because if someone kills the viewer or it crashes then the console will be waiting for a response that never comes. I will look at tuning this, but suggestions welcome.

I will look into x17 and x26. I think I can guess the issue for 17, but unless 26 is doing something obscure I think it should have just worked.

Phil

-----Original Message-----
From: "Alan W. Irwin" <ir...@be...>
Sent: ‎04/‎07/‎2015 18:51
To: "Phil Rosenberg" <p.d...@gm...>
Cc: "PLplot development list" <Plp...@li...>
Subject: Re: Status report on remaining issues to be addressed for theforthcoming 5.11.1 release (wxwidgets issues)

Hi Phil:

Your recent efficiency improvements means it is now a lot more
convenient to test the wxwidgets device.  So I have done that and
noticed the following issues that appear to be caused by your
efficiency improvements.

* The -np option no longer works properly.  For example, before these
efficency improvements

examples/c/x08c -dev wxwidgets -np

would (extremely slowly) render each page of that example and then exit.

Now, the rendering for each page simply presents a a black screen
before the exit occurs.  Sometimes, just as the example exits you will
see a quick flash of the last page, but usually not.

In addition, the example now produces the following WARNING message
for 5 of the pages

*** PLPLOT WARNING ***
Failed to get text size from wxPLViewer - timeout

Without the -np option, none of these problems occur, and the
time to render all the example 8 pages has a noticeable efficiency
improvement consistent with the length of time the black screen
is rendered when the -np option is used.

* examples/c/x17c -dev wxwidgets shows huge efficiency improvements,
but it has changed from an interactive plot showing all the
intermediate results to a black screen until the very end which then
shows the final results. In other words, the interactive nature of
this example has been lost.

* examples/c/x26c -dev wxwidgets shows something is wrong with the
delivery of string-length calculations between -dev wxwidgets and
wxPLViewer.  (For this case I am not sure whether this issue was
introduced right when you implemented the new string-length
calculation for wxwidgets or is the result of your recent efficiency
changes.) The delivery of string-length information should be done
independently for each page of this example (since the Russian text of
the second page is longer than the English text of the first page).

What goes on here is that _for each page of the example_ the pllegend
call internally calls plstrl which then requests the wxwidgets device
to deliver plsc->string_length (used by pllegend to adjust legend-box
size) before wxwidgets actually renders the string.  Of course, the
complication is that -dev wxwidgets measures string lengths and
renders those strings indirectly via wxPLViewer.  So obviously there
has to be communications between -dev wxwidgets and wxPLViewer for
every different page of example 26 to get that done properly.

Instead what happens now is that examples/c/x26c -dev wxwidgets 
incorrectly finishes (i.e., you get a command-line prompt and/or time
results if requested) as soon as the first page of that example has 
been rendered by wxPLViewer. And when the second page is viewed by
hitting the enter key for the wxPLViewer GUI, the legend box (which
should be controlled by the string-length calculation for the Russian
text of that page) appears to be the same size as the first page so
that the longer Russian text for the second page overflows the legend
box for that page.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

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); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
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