I have often been annoyed by the behavior of plot when I try to plot
something but have previously plotted something so the 2nd plot fails with
this message:
Unable to write to file: ...plot.pdf
If the file is open in Adobe, close the file and try again.
I changed this behavior by inserting this code into "pdf_write" in
"jzplot.ijs" and "pdfdraw.ijs":
wroteFile=. 1
if. _1 -: dat flwrite file do.
file=. (":?1e3) (([ ,~ ] {.~ '.' i:~ ]) , ] }.~ '.' i:~ ]) file
wroteFile=. 0
end.
if. -.wroteFile do.
...
end.
immediately preceding and encompassing the statement block starting "while.
_1 -: dat flwrite file do." in both jzplot and pdfdraw; I also made a
similar change for "OutputFile" in the function "write" in "publish.ijs".
This changes the name of "plot.pdf" to "'plot',(":?1e3),'.pdf'" if the
initial write attempt fails but this name change is local to the writing
fns so I don't know what side-effects this has.
It looks like the name "~temp/plot.pdf" is assigned to the global
"PDF_DEFFILE" in jzplot. The only place I see this global used is inside
"pdf_getparms" which is used in "pdf_show" and "pdf_get" and these two
function names are assigned to the globals "pd_pdf" and "pd_pdfr" in
jzplot. I don't see any uses of these names other than this assignment.
In any case, it would be nice to incorporate this into the J code base. If
not, I suppose I can continue to manually update the modules whenever I
upgrade. Maybe I will eventually encounter an unwanted side-effect.
Right now it looks like this change might clutter up my ~temp area with
random PDF files but I can live with that.
--
Devon McCormick, CFA
Quantitative Consultant
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