#64 dashed and dotted lines in time series plots

[Anonymous]

I really like the Gretl time series plot, However, I would like to have the posibility of having dashed and dotted lines. When e.g. printing out a graph in black and white it is difficult to see the difference between colours. Hope this will be added in a later release!

[Sven S.]

This came up again with some concrete suggestions last year:
http://lists.wfu.edu/pipermail/gretl-devel/2014-May/005082.html

I agree it would be nice if this "set termoption dashed" from gnuplot could somehow be used in gretl.

thanks,
sven

[Sven S.]

Whatever happened to this? The mailing list thread linked to above somehow stops before the issue is finished and / or resolved... It's not clear to me whether in principle it works with the gnuplot version bundled by gretl via appropriate literal script commands.
thanks,
sven

[Sven S.]

It seems the problem is that with gnuplot versions <5 the dashed option is not robust and it depends on the "terminal" (backend). With gnuplot v5 it should be better and I'm pushing for the switch to gnuplot5 (see also the devel mailing list in early 2016). So there is some hope that dashed lines may finally be coming to gretl in 2016.
cheers,
sven

[Sven S.]

For reference I'm copying / citing a suggestion by Jack on the mailing list from March:
<jack>
Or better still: since we have already an internal function to establish the gnuplot version at runtime, we could have a "dashtype" GUI item that is activated iff the gnuplot version the user has is 5.0 or above.

This would be totally ok for win and Mac people, and would leave the burden of upgrading only on linux guys who can either (i) upgrade by hand or (ii) wait for their distro of choice to do so or (iii) change distro
</jack>

cheers,
sven

[Allin Cottrell]

On Wed, 18 May 2016, Sven S. wrote:

For reference I'm copying / citing a suggestion by Jack on the
mailing list from March:

Fine, but the OP talked about the problem of printing a plot in
monochrome (colors not distinghuisable). But if you're printing to a
non-color printer you should use a vector format (e.g., EMF, PDF or
PostScript) and choose the monochrome option in the GUI. Then you
will get dashed lines rather than colors by default.

Selecting dashed/non-dashed lines when displaying or printing a plot
in color is another matter (an "expert" thing). We can probably
support it, with some effort, but IMO it goes beyond what the OP was
asking for.

Allin

[Sven S.]

Hm, yes and no. On the one hand both the OP and myself have not been aware that the monochrome setting has the effects that you mention, so thanks for that hint.
On the other hand, since the monochrome setting is in a place quite different from the other GUI plot edit settings and the line appearances do not seem to be editable in monochrome, I don't think this counts fully as a comparable feature.
Irrespective of what this particular OP meant, the request for dashed lines has also appeared on the lists (and not only from me). I understand the work involved, it seems it always boils down to the problem with gnuplot's different "terminals". That's why I think moving to gnuplot 5 is important.
cheers,
sven

[Allin Cottrell]

Fair enough. There's some work started, in the direction of adding
control over dash patterns.

Allin

On Thu, 19 May 2016, Sven S. wrote:

Hm, yes and no. On the one hand both the OP and myself have not been aware that the monochrome setting has the effects that you mention, so thanks for that hint.
On the other hand, since the monochrome setting is in a place quite different from the other GUI plot edit settings and the line appearances do not seem to be editable in monochrome, I don't think this counts fully as a comparable feature.
Irrespective of what this particular OP meant, the request for dashed lines has also appeared on the lists (and not only from me). I understand the work involved, it seems it always boils down to the problem with gnuplot's different "terminals". That's why I think moving to gnuplot 5 is important.
cheers,

[Sven S.]

In the meantime let me just point to a mailing list thread which is somewhat related: http://lists.wfu.edu/pipermail/gretl-users/2016-September/012022.html

[Sven S.]

Interesting new developments: See this thread http://lists.wfu.edu/pipermail/gretl-users/2016-October/012121.html for a hint about a solution. I'm repeating my own example here:
<hansl>
open denmark.gdt --quiet
list Lplot = LRM LRY
plot Lplot
options with-lines time-series
literal set linetype 1 dashtype 2
literal set linetype 2 dashtype 2
# literal set mono
end plot --output=display
</hansl>

What remains to be done is to enhance gretl's plotting GUI with the corresponding dashtype choosers. (But of course that would finally mean requiring gnuplot version 5 also on older Linux distros, if I understand the issue correctly.)

[Sven S.]

Any news in that area? Is the time ripe for enforcing gnuplot 5 also on Linux? Am I actually correct that this is a prerequisite for dash pattern control in the GUI?
thanks,
sven

[Allin Cottrell]

On Wed, 30 Aug 2017, Sven S. wrote:

Any news in that area? Is the time ripe for enforcing gnuplot 5 also on Linux? Am I actually correct that this is a prerequisite for dash pattern control in the GUI?
thanks,
sven

The requirement of gnuplot 5 is in fact now enforced on Linux (and
it's present in the Windows and Mac packages). It's just a somewhat
tedious and error-prone task to add dashtypes to the gretl/gnuplot
apparatus.

[Sven S.]

This is now (December 2017) implemented as a drop-down selector in the plot-editing window. Thanks to everybody for their patience! Closing this.