Suggested changes to the NEWS file.

[John W. Eaton]

On 15-Oct-2007, Peter Gustafson wrote:

| It looks like NEWS hasn't been updated for a long while.

It hasn't been that long, it's just that it was not actively
maintained for a long time, then recently we added some entries for
important user-visible changes.  I don't think it is reasonable to
expect a full list of changes since the last real release of Octave,
or even since the 2.1.73 snapshot.  But if there are additional
important changes that could cause trouble for users upgrading from
old versions of Octave, I think it would be good to include entries in
the NEWS file for them.  I could also use help in generating those
entries.

| Attached is a
| patch which makes some minor changes which I think are helpful.  Take
| what you agree with, discard the rest.
| 
| Only one change I think is critical, that being the bullet where it had
| said you can use old style (__gnuplot_set_ etc) or matlab style but not
| both.

| Am I correct in saying that the __gnuplot_* series of commands
| don't do anything at the user level and should not be advertised?

Not quite.  They still work, but they connect to a separate gnuplot
process from the one that is used by the Matlab-graphics-handle-style
plotting functions.

I've just checked in the following change to the NEWS file.

Thanks,

jwe

Index: NEWS
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/octave/NEWS,v
retrieving revision 1.72
diff -u -u -r1.72 NEWS
--- NEWS        27 Aug 2007 19:27:39 -0000      1.72
+++ NEWS        18 Oct 2007 15:44:10 -0000
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
     Graphics (tm):
 
     + You can make a subplot and then use the print function to
-      generate file with the plot.
+      generate a file with the plot.
 
     + RGB line colors are supported if you use gnuplot 4.2.  Octave
       can still use gnuplot 4.0, but there is no way to set arbitrary
@@ -34,10 +34,18 @@
       this allows you to plot additional 2-d data on top of a contour
       plot.
 
-    + It is no longer possible to mix Matlab-style plot commands with
-      the old (and now considered obsolete) style of plot commands
-      (__gnuplot_set__, etc.).  You can do one or the other, but not
-      both for the same plot.
+    + The following plot commands are now considered obsolete and will
+      be removed from a future version of Octave:
+
+       __gnuplot_set__
+       __gnuplot_show__
+       __gnuplot_plot__
+       __gnuplot_splot__
+       __gnuplot_replot__
+
+      Additionally, these functions no longer have any effect on plots
+      created with the Matlab-style plot commands (plot, line, mesh,
+      semilogx, etc.).
 
     + Plot property values are not extensively checked.  Specifying
       invalid property values may produce unpredictible results.
@@ -47,7 +55,12 @@
       cluttering /tmp with data files, it is no longer possible to use
       the mouse to zoom in on plots.  This is a limitation of gnuplot,
       which is unable to zoom when the data it plots is not stored in
-      a file.
+      a file.  Some work has been done to fix this problem in newer
+      versions of gnuplot (> 4.2.2).  See for example, this thread
+
+        http://www.nabble.com/zooming-of-inline-data-tf4357017.html#a12416496
+
+      on the gnuplot development list.
 
  ** The way Octave handles search paths has changed.  Instead of
     setting the built-in variable LOADPATH, you must use addpath,