Weird GNUPLOT problem (but *not* just Gnuplot)

[Dave Horsfall]

No replies?  Am I the only person on the planet having this problem?

It's not confined to Gnuplot, but pretty much anything that wants to save 
a modified file, such as TextEdit (such as my prescriptions, which for me 
is pretty much a matter of life and death).

I note that this crap only started happening after last Monday's weekly 
update; up until then, my MacBook had performed flawlessly...  Could the 
perp responsible please raise their hand?

Should I back out that flawed update (if I can remember how) and stop 
doing any further updates until I am assured that they will actually work 
i.e. they were actually tested?  For some reason the Therac-25 (look it 
up; it's the story of an untested software update that went horribly 
wrong) springs to mind...

What can I do to provide more information?  Whoever in Cupertino is 
receiving the crash reports when I abort the hung processes must be 
getting pretty sick of them by now, and that's not looking too good for 
MacPorts...

Excuse my attitude, but after nearly 50 years in the IT game (probably 
longer than most people on this list have been alive) I've never seen 
anything like this.

On Thu, 10 Sep 2020, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> MacBook Pro (early) with Sierra (all updates); can't be more precise than 
> that because "About This Mac" is no longer displaying anything (SMC reset 
> required?) since a reboot, but that's not my immediate problem.
>
> Gnuplot Version 5.2 patchlevel 8    last modified 2019-12-01
>
> When trying to save a graph (any graph) I get as far as "Save As" and I get 
> the dreaded spinning beachball instead of the file selection; I've waited up 
> to an hour before killing it by doing in AquaTerm.  This started happening 
> after my Monday "port upgrade outdated", so I'm guessing that I now have a 
> bad library somewhere as a result of the upgrade?  There were a few library 
> updates, as I recall...
>
> I'm trying to figure out whether this is a Mac/Gnuplot problem or a user 
> error, so I'm wondering whether others have seen this before I report it as a 
> possible Gnuplot bug (but I can't see how it could be, because it wasn't 
> touched as such).
>
> Thanks (and yeah, I have a few outstanding replies to follow up)
>
> -- Dave
>

-- Dave