Re: Graphic support in CVS

[Ilya Zakharevich <nospam-abuse@ilyaz.org>]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 07:12:57PM +0100, Karim Belabas wrote:
> I tried unsuccessfully to install Term::Gnuplot on 2 different Linux machines:
> (Fedora and Mandriva distributions), and both failed to build.

Did you try to report this to the author of Term::Gnuplot?  1/2 ;-)

> Gnuplot support 
> 1) complicated quite a bit the Configure scripts, and the relevant graphing code
> ( swapping functions with #define magic to support simulatneously two
> graphing engines )

> 2) did not bring in a major improvement compared to the other plotting engines

AFAIK, having graphic engine available BY DEFAULT is a major
improvement.  (To enable graphics, all one needs to do is to install a
Perl module, which is an automatic process [of course, this assumes it
succeeds].  There is no need to rebuild GP/PARI, which is NOT an
automatic process in many cases.)

> 3) was at the best of times quite difficult to build ( I failed more often
> than not when trying to compile gnuplot support ).

Same may be said about building GP/PARI.

> 4) was not trivial to integrate with the new implementation of 
> rectdraw0 / gen_rectdraw0.

I may have some time to do this.

> 5) did not seem to have many users.

Well, people are asking me time to time about this.

> 6) brought in legal difficulties [ the gnuplot license is not so permissive ]

I do not think the code of the shim is anyway bound by the gnuplot
license.  Even the API of the shim is very different.

Hope this helps,
Ilya