[Plplot-general] Are there any objections to these backwards-incompatible cruft removal plans?

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

I am planning to do a substantial amount of backwards-incompatible
changes to remove cruft in our git master branch version of PLplot
which will be the basis for our next release (currently planned for
early 2018).  So unless I hear strong arguments to the contrary
because some of you are still dependent on this cruft, I am planning
to go ahead with these changes in the next couple of days. That is,
speak now or forever hold your peace.  :-)

Here is what is planned....

1. Remove PL_NC_GENERIC_POINTER and PL_NC_GENERIC_POINTER (both
typedefed to void *).  These typedefs were introduced in plplot-5.12.0
as preparation for a plan I ultimately decided was not a good idea.
Therefore, these two typedefs were deprecated in favor of the
long-available PlPointer (also typedefed to void *) as of
plplot-5.13.0.  Because PL_NC_GENERIC_POINTER and PL_NC_GENERIC_POINTER
have been available such a short amount of time, I don't think a long
deprecation period is required which is why I plan to remove them in
the next release.  But I am willing to deprecate them longer if
some of you are currently using them extensively.

2. Officially deprecate plshade1. i.e., it will only be accessible if
the user specifies the -DPL_DEPRECATED=ON option for the next release,
and it will likely be removed one or two more releases down the road.
The reason for this deprecation is anything plshade1 can do can also
be done by plshade (which is identical to plshade1 except for the more
general type of its first matrix argument).  This change should only
concern those still using plshade1 rather than the plshade
alternative.

3. Remove plrgb, plrgb1, plhls, and plwid which have been officially
deprecated for a long time.  This change should only concern those who
are using the -DPL_DEPRECATED=ON cmake option (the only current
way it is possible to gain access to these officially deprecated
functions).

4. Remove the deprecated old fortran binding which was superseded by
the new fortran binding as of plplot-5.12.0 (released in January this
year).  The new fortran binding was implemented using the powerful
capabilities of the Fortran 2003 iso_c_binding module (as opposed to
an interface written in C that was used to implement the old Fortran
binding).  The new binding is much more consistent and
standards-compliant than the old binding, and also has some powerful
new features (both single and double precisions Fortran floating-point
arguments are accepted).  Therefore, the new binding is necessarily
backwards incompatible with the old binding.

This change to remove the old fortran binding should only be of concern to
those of you who who are using -DPL_DEPRECATED_f95=ON for
plplot-5.12.0 or the equivalent -DPL_DEPRECATED_fortran=ON for
plplot-5.13.0 (these cmake options are the only way to gain access to
this old fortran binding for those two releases).

5. Remove the deprecated old tcl binding which was superseded by 
the new "redacted" tcl binding as of plplot-5.12.0 (released in January this
year).  This was a major backward-incompatible change that replaced e.g.,

$w cmd plline $nsize x y

with

$w cmd plline x y

where the redundant $nsize (because both the x and
y arrays carry that information) argument is dropped (redacted)
just like in the rest of our bindings (except currently for c++
which will likely also be changed to redacted form in the future).

This change to remove the old tcl binding should only concern those
who are using the -DUSE_NON_REDACTED_TCL_TK=ON cmake option (the only
way to gain access to this old "non-redacted" Tcl binding).

So let me know if any of these changes affect you adversely, and we will
take it from there.

Alan
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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).
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Linux-powered Science
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