Re: gnuplot graphics toolkit bugs

[Tatsuro MATSUOKA]

----- Original Message -----

> From: Daniel J Sebald 
> To: Tatsuro MATSUOKA 
> Cc: Maintainers List Octave 
> Date: 2015/6/25, Thu 13:01
> Subject: Re: gnuplot graphics toolkit bugs
> 
> On 06/24/2015 10:11 PM, Tatsuro MATSUOKA wrote:
>>  ----- Original Message -----
> 
> [snip]
> 
>>  However, I surprised when I found the description:
>>  "* Mouse double-click to export terminal coordinates to the X11
>>  clipboard no longer works reliably, and may be deprecated in the 
> future."
>> 
>>  I do not know reason why "Mouse double-click to export terminal 
> coordinates
>>  to the X11 clipboard no longer works" happened
>>  but surprised that the statements "(it) may be deprecated in the 
> future."
>>  The developers selected not to fix the issue but to kill the feature.
>>  The important feature will be lost from X11 terminal.
> 
> Yes, I hadn't seen that before either.  I think there was frustration with 
> getting X11 copy/paste to work with a clipboard manager, something I rarely 
> use 
> (where I use the usual X11 copy/paste types of things all the time).  X11 is 
> a 
> little strange in that no data is requested of the copy source until the 
> paste 
> operation takes place.  There is some handshaking to figure out what data 
> format 
> the destination accepts and the source provides--then the data is 
> transferred.  
> It's not easy to program.
> 
> 
>>  As you know, configure in gnuplot 5, automatically enables qt terminal
>>  if qt development environments are available.
>>  In addition, qt terminal is selected as a default terminal without any
>>  external setting like "export GNUTERM=wxt".
>>  (On gnuplot 4, to enable qt, one should set option --with-qt at configure.)
>> 
>> 
>>  This behavior can be understand from the description:
>> 
>>  Part of RELEASE NOTES
>> 
>>  NOTES TO PACKAGERS AND TESTERS
>>  <snipped unrelated information>
>> 
>>    Configuration options for interactive use
>>      1. Qt The qt terminal supports interactive display with menu-driven 
> output to png, svg or pdf. If either Qt4 or Qt5 is detected by the configure 
> script, this will be the default terminal. It is now the fastest and most 
> full-featured interactive terminal option.
>>  To disable this terminal:
>>  ./configure --without-qt
>>  To force use of Qt4 even if Qt5 is present:
>>  ./configure --with-qt=qt4
>>      2. Cairo/pango/wxWidgets This set of terminals includes
>>      * pngcairo, pdfcairo, epscairo, and cairolatex for output to a file
>>      * wxt for interactive display All of these will be built by default if 
> the configuration script finds the required libcairo, libpango, libcairo, 
> libwxgtk, and related support libraries To disable these terminals:
>>  ./configure --without-cairo ./configure --with-cairo --disable-wxt
>>      3. X11 (the "classic" interactive interface)
>>  This used to be the preferred interactive interface, but the newer wxt and 
> qt terminals offer nicer output and a wider range of features.
>>  They clearly states that
> 
> All true...
> 
>>     It is now the fastest and most full-featured interactive terminal 
> option. (for qt)
> 
> except the speed.  Perhaps there is some hardware in which Qt can use, say, 
> OpenGL directly, but on my system that isn't the case.  Qt terminal is 
> drastically slower.
> 
> 
>>  I am using gnuplot mainly on windows and sometimes use it on Ubuntu.
>>  I select wxt terminal as a default terminal using startup file setting on 
> both windows and Ubuntu.
>>  Because it works both platforms. I do not select qt terminal because there 
> sometimes reported bug fixes
>>  for qt terminal in the ChangeLog of development branch (Now 5.1).
> 
> Actually, qt terminal did a leap frog on wxt as far as the features. But 
> recently some more copy/past/print code was added to wxt so both behave in a 
> very similar way.
> 
> 
>>    I some times provide windows binaries on gnuplot release. (e.g 4.6.6, 64 
> bit version of 5.0.0 and 5.0.1)
>>  On window binaries for gnuplot ver. 5, qt terminal is available but not a 
> default.
>>  The default terminal is wxt.
> 
> Yes, appreciate it, thanks.  Wxt is good.
> 
In my personal opinion, wxt terminal is the best choice for gnuplot 
graphics_toolkit at this moment
if it is available because it gives anti-aliased plot and platform independent.

If it is not available, the second selection is x11 (for unix), 
windows(windows), and aqua(mac).

Unfortunately gnuplot bundled with octave for windows built with on other 
external 
libraries so that wxt terminal is not available.

Enabling wxt terminal (and hopefully also lua terminal) on mxe-octave system 
are rather complicated work. 
I myself use gnuplot itself for final graph but not use octave for it.

So I do not have strong motivation to write patches that gnuplot bundled with 
octave for windows fully functional.
(I only made patches for gnuplot version up from 4.6.2 to 4.6.7 for mxe-octave.)
 
Tatsuro