support for "dumb" graphics device -- is it a bad idea?

[John W. Eaton]

On 17-Nov-2007, Joseph P. Skudlarek wrote:

| "dumb" or "txt" is not supported as a known plotting device type by
| Octave, yet "dumb" is supported by gnuplot on both Unix/Linux and
| Windows, contrary to email below; perhaps the email claim had to do with
| gnuplot 4.0 vs 4.2?
| 
|     Problems with plotting (Windows)
|     by Michael Goffioul-3 Feb 10, 2007; 06:12am 
| 
|     I detected 2 problems in the new plotting system:
|     - drawnow.m: use "dumb" terminal is DISPLAY variable is not defined;
|     under Windows, this variable is not defined, so adding a "&& isunix()" in
|     the test would be OK
| 
| Anyway, I would like to modify print.m to enable "txt" as an output
| device, have "txt" map to gnuplot's "dumb" device, and accept the size
| options.  I do not plan to modify the DISPLAY handling, since I don't
| build on Windows, and wouldn't be able to test the changes.
| 
| But I only want to make these changes if they make sense and would
| likely be accepted as part of Octave.  Any good reason NOT to do this?
| Replies received by end of day Mon 19Nov07 would be appreciated.
| 
| [FYI: One reason to allow this is to enable simple ascii plots in the
| info files; eg, the "plot" figure is a simple sine wave which does
| reproduce well enough as ascii graphics.]

I don't suppose I object to this, though again, this is an output type
that may not be easily supported in the future if we use something
other than gnuplot for graphics.

jwe