Re: [Plplot-devel] New test run on Debian woody + FURTHER TESTS + NEW RELEASE?

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

On Thu, 18 Oct 2001, [iso-8859-1] Jo=E3o Cardoso wrote:

> On Thursday 18 October 2001 01:32, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> ...
> | (3) All the octave colours were weak.  I did not notice that
> | problem when I last ran a test (under the old version of octave in
> | potato).  Do you get this problem also, Joao?  Note my version of
> | octave is now 2.0.  octave 2.1 is currently in unstable and may get
> | into woody soon.
>
> What do you mean with "weak"? the colors got faded? pastel? gone? :)
> I work with octave-2.1.34, xfree-4.1.0, tcltk-8.3...

Sorry.  False alarm.  I only looked at the octave plots yesterday because
they were the only ones different from previous (presumably because of
legend changes). This morning I investigated further and it turns out the
effect is in all our plots and is caused by antialiasing in gv and has
nothing to do with actual plplot file results.  With the new gv,
antialiasing is on by default which causes the colours of the sharp lines
in our plots to look horrible. gv -noantialiasing solves the problem.

So discounting the python2 name change, that only leaves the xw09.py
segfault, and the continuing problem with the 3rd map in x19c.ps as the onl=
y
obvious errors left in the non-interactive postscript tests.

FURTHER TESTS....

I also ran the script for the png driver this morning, and there are some
problems (for real this time ....;-)) with the octave stuff in that case.
There are severe size problems with the legends for all plots.  This does
not happen for the postscript results although the sizing of the legends
needs work there as well.  I think the problem is that pixel units are bein=
g
used rather than coordinates that will give the same result for every
driver. Also, page 1 of the p15 plot and page 1 of the p7 plot are missing =
a
lot of the plot that is visible with the postscript driver.  I think it is =
a
colour initialization problem in both cases that might be fixed by setting
the colour at the start of each octave example rather than relying on
default values.  (I have run into this problem before with the octave
examples; the colour results depend on the order you run the plots, and the
driver.)

All png results differed from previous which is expected because I am now
using libgd-2.0.1 rather than the old libgd-1.7.3 that was available for
potato.  However, visual inspection showed nothing obviously wrong except
for the remarks I made above about the octave results for the png driver.
In particular Andrew's png driver changes he made some time ago to rescale
the size seemed to fix some line hiding problems that appeared in the
old results.  (The only thing I can think of that would explain that
result is that we were subject to rounding errors before with the small
number of pixels.)

I also exercised all the tk interactive examples, and they seem to work
fine.

Geoffrey, I would be happy to add java to the testing, but I would need a
short cookbook from you on exactly what software to get and what commands
to run to exercise your examples.  I probably also need advice from Rafael
about how to implement java on Debian.  For example, I looked for java
packages, and there is dummy java virtual machine and dummy java compiler.
The advice for these packages is to install them if you have a "real" java
compiler and java virtual machine.  Huh?

NEW RELEASE?

If somebody is willing to fix the two mentioned postscript problems, and
Joao sorts out the legend coordinate and colour initialization problems for
the octave examples, I think that would put us in good position to release
5.1.0 as a stable release in the near future featuring the dynamic drivers
and the new java stuff (if I can figure out how to test it).  This
presupposes that it will be some time (because of his new job pressures)
beofe Rafael can start integrating his AM/LT changes.

What do the rest of you think of this release strategy?  My motivation is t=
o
continue to release often so that users have something definite they can
rely on rather than the moving target that is CVS HEAD.  Also our ~1500 use=
rs
(as judged from the download numbers) seem quite willing to download and
try out each new version, and this diverse testing is quite a help for
improving our product.

I am hoping to release say two weeks from now, but that timing depends
critically on people stepping forward to fix the bugs I mentioned and on
whether other bugs are there which I an unaware of.  Also it depends
critically on whether there are plans to add important new functionality
such as the tea-based stuff to the HEAD in the near future. So let me know
your thoughts.

Alan