branching for release?

[John W. Eaton]

On 18-Jan-2011, John W. Eaton wrote:

| If we were to release today with the current sources, are there any
| mind blowingly obvious problems that will affect nearly everyone who
| runs Octave?

I think we should rename the "backend" function.  The name "backend"
by itself does not give me any clue that this function has anything
to do with graphics.

I know this is not really a problem in the sense that it causes a crash
or incorrect result, but it is something taht is important because this
is a name that will likely be fairly widely used, so we should try to
get it right before a real release happens.

How about a more descriptive name like

  X_Y

where X is one of graphics, plot, plotting, graphical, or similar and
Y is one of engine, renderer, toolkit, or similar.

Does anyone have a strong preference?

Having it begin with plot will make it more likely to be seen by anyone
using command completion on plot, but other than that, I'm not sure any
one of these options jumps out at me as being the clear winner.  But I
do feel strongly that "backend" alone is not so good.

Also, should the current graphics engine/renderer/whatever that uses
fltk and OpenGL be called just fltk or fltk_opengl?  I mean, it is not
just fltk that we use, right?

Also, did I mention this before?  I thought I did, but I can't find a
message about it now.

jwe