[ REQ 5412]: Trouble with geomview

[dilatush at sccs.swarthmore.edu]

I've been having some trouble with geomview, or rather with the 
associated utility program, offconsol.  It seems not to handle files
well when they contain numbers in scientific notation.  The file
I've been working with was generated by Mathematica, from the command:

	ParametricPlot3D[{Sin[u]^2 Cos[v], Cos[v]^2, Cos[u]-Sin[v]},
        {u,0,2Pi},{v,0,2Pi}]

When 'offconsol' is run on the file, it generates some lines like

4        12 54 55 -6107398

where the -6107398 is obviously an invalid index.

If I filter the original file through the sed command
	sed 's/.\..*e-32/0/g'
it then consolidates fine and displays fine in geomview; it seems the
'infinitesimals' cause offconsol problems.

The offconsol distributed with Geomview versions 1.5 and 1.4.3 (SGI)
both do this.

I don't know whether this behavior of offconsol is normal; however,
math2oogl generates the file, and geomview reads it without trouble.

I'm not including the files in this message to keep its length down.
If you want them, email me and I'll send them to you.