Re: fltk printing [changest]

[Ben Abbott]

On Aug 4, 2010, at 11:17 PM, Michael D Godfrey wrote:

> On 08/04/2010 05:48 PM, Ben Abbott wrote:
>> I've pushed a changeset.
>>      
>> http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/d5a7db05d591
>> 
> Ben,
> 
> I read through the changeset. I would say that it should be
> committed.  The sooner people start trying it the better.
> 
> A few comments:
> 
> 1. About debug code: I am always in favor of leaving it in.  You never
>     know when something will go wrong.
> 
> 2. It may be good to think of a "verbose" mode.  Not quite the same
>     as debug mode, but providing information that a user might find useful
>     in deciding whether he did something wrong, or if there is a problem in
>     the code.  For instance, verbose mode should show what command line
>     was sent to gs, or whatever processors did the work.  Lots of people know
>     a lot about gs.  They could figure out why they are not getting what they
>     want if they could see what options  were sent to the processor.
> 
> 3. Since graphics display is "in the eye of the beholder" it will never be 
> possible
>     to find what is seen as "right" for everyone.  Making it possible for 
> users to
>     set choices which satisfy their preferences is essential.
> 
> Thanks,
> Michael

This changeset has been committed.

The debug mode currently echos the gs, pstoedit, and fig2dev commands to the 
command line. However, it does not report what the backend is doing. I'll add 
that so the user can follow along. 

I like the idea of a verbose mode. Perhaps the right thing to do is to have 
debug mode (-debug) continue to produce a gnuplot plotstream as it has in the 
past, and have verbose mode (-v) report to the user the details of what is 
being done (as -debug does for the FLTK backend now).

Regarding a verbose mode, Matlab has one for Windows. I have some colleagues at 
work who use ML on Windows. I'll do some testing to determine what is reports. 
I'm not sure we need to be compatible here, but it won't hurt to try.

Ben