Phil ASTRAY - 2009-04-02

In some applications, typically where time extends over long periods and events occur over shorter periods (e.g. a few hours over 24 hours), there are big gaps with no data.

It would be quite interesting to introduce a new directive, shrinking big gaps to discontinuity points.

So i suggest to introduce the directive:
# set xcollapse 3600 10

which tells here that x-ranges greater than 3600 should be visually shrunk to 60, with a discontinuity.

Or just "set xcollapse 3600", meaning that, if x represents time, empty strips extending over an hour shoud be merely removed.

This allow to generate/print/view without scrolling data plots over larger x-values.

Of course, this implies keeping the labels/ticks in phase, which, i guess, is the harder part to implement.

What's your feeling ?

Regards
Phil