From: Alan W. I. <ir...@be...> - 2005-04-28 03:41:33
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On 2005-04-27 18:14-0500 mj...@ga... wrote: > Thomas J. Duck writes: > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > Hash: SHA1 > > > > Hi, > > > > The move to using TrueType fonts by default for PLplot has very much > > improved the default quality of our plots. This is important for users > > who casually drop by the Web site to see if PLplot might suit their needs. > > Most people will judge a package based on the default results. > > > > I would like to suggest another change to improve the default > > "pretty-ness" of the plots: I think that we should move from default Red > > lines on a Black background to Black lines on a White background. The Red > > on Black seems very 1980s to me, and it would be better to have a more > > contemporary look. I expect that most users will want Black on White > > because this is what you need when plotting to paper. > > > > This is probably a good time to attempt such a switch-over. The > > rapid development release cycle will allow us to get feedback from users > > before a final release. > > I have to say I'm not at all happy with such a change. Most users do not > reset the default palette before starting to make plots, so this change > is tantamount to "breaking" virtually every plot currently in existence. > Please make it optional only. The problem is that every developer that discussed it before you is privately doing special options to overcome the black background problem. In fact some of those options to change colours have crept into individual device drivers such as gd.c. So I think very few developers like the current default colours. Assuming our goal is to have good colour defaults, I think it is clear we should change that default just as we have done so recently for fonts. So I think the question really boils down to what is the best way to get from the old default colours to the new ones without overly disrupting users. For example, do you think legacy needs would be satisfied by having an -oldcolor option that was well-advertised? Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin email: ir...@be... phone: 250-727-2902 Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ |