From: <dan...@ie...> - 2005-02-13 21:59:31
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> On Sun, 13 Feb 2005, Ethan Merritt wrote: > >> > Have a look at this example: >> > >> > set terminal epslatex standalone color \ >> > header "\\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}\n\\usepackage{mathpmnt}" \ >> > 'default' 12 >> >> Yuck. Guaranteed to scare away novice users, like me. > > It scares away non-LaTeX users as you appear to be. But LaTeX users wil= l > understand the syntax. What is difficult using this syntax? You > do understand > set title "first line\nsecond line" > What is that different with the header "..." line? > >> Do you really expect people to type that gibberish in the 'set term' >> command? Surely this belongs in an auxilliary file, > > There is also the possibility of using 'gnuplot.cfg' which automaticall= y > is loaded when available. When working with the epslatex terminal I hav= e > noticed that this is impractical in some cases. For example if you want > different headers in different files. > > Thus: > - gnuplot.cfg is useful for common settings for different plot of the s= ame > project. > - The header option is useful for local settings that shall only appear > for the current plot. > > I think using another auxilliary file for local settings in impractical= . > You always have to handle two files then. Or you have to use a really > strange syntax like: > > set print 'localplot.cfg' > print '\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}' > print '\usepackage{mathpmnt}' > unset print > set terminal epslatex headerfile 'localplot.cfg' > > I don't like this syntax. I use LaTeX almost exclusively for documents, but I've come in at the middle of this conversation. I'm very used to including the epslatex output in a LaTeX file. Or I create a simple little file with all the necessary header information, then compile that and convert the figure to EPS using the -E option of dvips. So I guess your standalone option is supposed to allow someone to create = a file to circumvent the process I described above. I can see that as bein= g useful for some 3rd party program that wants to generate a no-brainer latex file for a user. (But wouldn't a more generic format be in order, where one could simply append gnuplot output to an open file?) But I can't ever see myself using such a thing, unless you could convince me of some time savings. In the first case I simply copy a short "auxiliary" file I've already written for some other figure and change the name within. A bit kludgy, but not bad. And if I want to change something in the header, no problem= , no need to rerun gnuplot. (Of course, that is the case for the proposed syntax, but the presumption is that the new syntax is the way to make changes. In the proposed case I must always keep track of the header fil= e when I'm creating a figure through gnuplot or Octave. Hmmm... I just don't know. For automated third party programs? Perhaps. Dan |