gnuplot-beta — Developers and beta testers of new gnuplot code

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[Tait <gnu...@t4...>]

pl...@pi... said (on 2011/10/21):
> I have given up using opera for svg since it opens local svg files
> as text. A bug I reported over a year ago and remains AFAIK
> unaddressed. I have to upload somewhere and access via http so I no
> long bother.

Odd... I don't have that problem. Local SVGs open fine for me. I'm
currently using 11.52 on Windows, but I've been using Opera to view
SVGs since at least 9.something.

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[Christoph B. <us...@be...>]

On 23.10.2011 19:46, sfeam (Ethan Merritt) wrote:
> On Sunday, 23 October 2011, Christoph Bersch wrote:
>> On 22.10.2011 20:47 sfeam (Ethan Merritt) wrote:
>>>
>>> Currently the PostScript and PDF terminals write a prologue record
>>>    /Title (<filename>)
>>> but there have been many complaints from people who don't like the
>>> way that some external tools handle this.
>>
>> I think, there had also been people complaining about the automatic
>> insertion of the author's login name in postscript files.
>
> Yes. So we removed it:
>
> ChangeLog (both 4.4 and 4.5)
> 2010-03-06  Ethan A Merritt<merritt@u.washington.edu>
>    * src/util.c configure.in config/config.cyg config/config.dj2
>    config/config.mgw config/config.ntconfig/config.os2 config/config.oww:
>    Remove the test for pwd.h, the configuration flag HAVE_PWD_H, and the
>    conditional code that copies GECOS information from the password file
>    into the header of PostScript and PDF output files.  This addresses
>    reported issues of privacy and reported problems with building a static
>    executable.

I only saw, that in the CVS version (14. Oct) with the postscript 
terminal the login name still is written to the output file. Only after 
your mail I found in the sources, that this information is taken from 
the 'USER' or 'USERNAME' environment variable.

Still I think that some kind of settings for the title, author name, 
description and maybe other meta data makes sense, and then one has a 
defined interface on how to set these properties.

Christoph

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[<pl...@pi...>]

On 10/22/11 17:45, Ethan Merritt wrote:
>      set term foo
>
>      set output 'plot1.foo'
>      set title "Graphs AB"
>      plot "A.dat" title "A", "B.dat" title "B"
>
>      set output 'plot2.foo'
>      set title "Graphs CDE"
>      plot "C.dat", "D.dat", "E.dat"
>
>      ... and so on for many plots
>
> I

There seem to be two ways to satisfy this sort of case:

1. a new global variable like set title , let's call it set doctitle. 
This could be reset without reopening the terminal.

2. use existing gnuplot and reopen the terminal with a new "name". This 
is somewhat of a work around but seems a reasonable one.

When I suggested  a new option to set output I was referring to 
something like 1 , since output is a variable , not an object it can't 
itself have options.

In the case of 1. help would explain that variable only affects some 
terminals (canvas,svg,pdf , etc) and is ignored where it is irrelevant.

2. Presents a compat issue for canvas since this is already out in the 
field. The terminal could default to existing behaviour if both are 
present,


Option 1 would seem to be the most structured solution since, as you 
have pointed out, this is not actually a property of the terminal.


Your code example (with more realistic plot titles) becomes :

       set term foo

       set output 'plot1.foo'
set doctitle "Corell A vs B"
       set title "Correlation ceofficient of quantity A against quantity B"
       plot "A.dat" title "A", "B.dat" title "B"

       set output 'plot2.foo'
set doctitle "Corell C vs DE"
       set title "Correlation ceofficient of quantity C against quantity 
D and E"
       plot "C.dat", "D.dat", "E.dat"



This also addresses the corollary issue that I brought up: the need for 
a visible name to conform to js syntax rules and the resulting untidy 
need for underscores.

terminal "name" would become in effect "js_id" . Its use would not 
compromise visible elements and errors would make more sense. Nothing 
would prevent automated scripts from using the same (js valid) string 
for both if that was desired.

Does the above scheme fit in with your requirements?

It's probably worth making the right choice at this stage since further 
compatibility issues will arise for changes made later, as features get 
into stable releases.



best regards, Peter.

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[<pl...@pi...>]

On 10/23/11 19:41, sfeam (Ethan Merritt) wrote:
> On Saturday, 22 October 2011, pl...@pi... wrote:
>> http://piments.com/tmp/opera-tabs.png
>>
>> The three files here are:
>> 1. A web based URL with an svg from gnuplot before recent changes.
>> 2. An html wrapper on a local server that opera decides to display the
>> whole URL not the fn.
>> 3. File with "name" based top level svg title.
>
> So Firefox chooses to display different things, depending on exactly how
> you point it at the file.

Errm, you will notice I was refering to Opera there not FF.

Also point of 2 above was that it was NOT an svg but HTML and shows that 
display of filenames is not consistent. 1 and 3 differ because 3 is 
using "name". This was to show how it offered more control.

So ,no, this was nothing to do with FF and did not show different 
behaviour wrt svg depending on how the file was opened.

The whole point is that browsers seem to take different choices of what 
to do if there is no title defined. Getting more consistency would be 
one reason to define what we want in a coherent way that browsers can 
display consistently .

>  And other browsers make other choices.
> I think you are presenting a good case that we should not spend too much
> effort worrying about the<title>  attribute.

I think I am presenting a good case why this needs to be dealt with 
correctly, not ignored. You are free to see things differently , of course.

>
>> [the] correct place to set this would seem to be when the file is opened,
>> ie as an option to set output.
>> Could you comment on whether that would fit the logic of more complex
>> plots?
>
> "set output" deals only with controlling the output stream.
> It knows nothing about the current terminal type or plot attributes.
> The one thing the program remembers after a "set output" command
> is the filename, which indeed is what the PostScript terminal
> currently uses as a title. But for other terminals it may make no
> sense at all.  Consider:
>      set output '|display png:-'
> Not very useful as a plot or window title :-)

Please read what I wrote. I in nowhere suggested that the current 
argument for "output" should be used as the svg title. My point was that 
if you consider this to be a function of the file rather than the 
terminal (a possition that I have agreed makes sense) it should be dealt 
with at the time the output file is determined. This means it has to be 
in set output.

It was you who said you thought using terminal "name" was not good and 
objected to reopening the terminal to reset it. That makes some sense 
but the overhead of reopening does not seem prohibitive.

Going with you idea that this is out of place in set terminal  would 
mean a new option in set output , not using the value of output itself.

>
> Is your objection to using the current command "set title"
> only that the title might not fit in a browser index tab?
>
My objection is that it _almost certainly_ will not fit in the tab. 
Opera seems to give it 12 characters. There is little chance that a the 
plot -title will be that short , thus the text in tab , which is the 
primary focal point when switching between tabs is rendered of little 
use for gnuplot svg output.

The mod you just committed fixes this from my point of view (thanks) but 
you seem unhappy with it.

I was trying to find a more rigorous solution that would satisfy your 
more complicated usage.

If you are not interested in taking it any further I'll drop it. Current 
cvs fits my needs fine.

regards, Peter.

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[sfeam (E. Merritt) <eam...@gm...>]

On Sunday, 23 October 2011, Christoph Bersch wrote:
> On 22.10.2011 20:47 sfeam (Ethan Merritt) wrote:
> > 
> > Currently the PostScript and PDF terminals write a prologue record
> >   /Title (<filename>)
> > but there have been many complaints from people who don't like the
> > way that some external tools handle this.  
> 
> I think, there had also been people complaining about the automatic
> insertion of the author's login name in postscript files.

Yes. So we removed it:

ChangeLog (both 4.4 and 4.5)
2010-03-06  Ethan A Merritt  <merritt@u.washington.edu>
  * src/util.c configure.in config/config.cyg config/config.dj2
  config/config.mgw config/config.ntconfig/config.os2 config/config.oww:
  Remove the test for pwd.h, the configuration flag HAVE_PWD_H, and the
  conditional code that copies GECOS information from the password file
  into the header of PostScript and PDF output files.  This addresses
  reported issues of privacy and reported problems with building a static
  executable.

I considered removing the /Title at the same time, but settled for
documenting a way to disable generation of the corresponding PDFMark
by editing the locally installed PostScript prolog template.
 
	Ethan

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[sfeam (E. Merritt) <eam...@gm...>]

On Saturday, 22 October 2011, pl...@pi... wrote:
> http://piments.com/tmp/opera-tabs.png
> 
> The three files here are:
> 1. A web based URL with an svg from gnuplot before recent changes.
> 2. An html wrapper on a local server that opera decides to display the 
> whole URL not the fn.
> 3. File with "name" based top level svg title.

So Firefox chooses to display different things, depending on exactly how
you point it at the file.  And other browsers make other choices.
I think you are presenting a good case that we should not spend too much
effort worrying about the <title> attribute.

> [the] correct place to set this would seem to be when the file is opened,
> ie as an option to set output.
> Could you comment on whether that would fit the logic of more complex
> plots?

"set output" deals only with controlling the output stream.  
It knows nothing about the current terminal type or plot attributes.
The one thing the program remembers after a "set output" command
is the filename, which indeed is what the PostScript terminal 
currently uses as a title. But for other terminals it may make no
sense at all.  Consider:
    set output '|display png:-'
Not very useful as a plot or window title :-)

Is your objection to using the current command "set title"
only that the title might not fit in a browser index tab?

	Ethan  

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[Christoph B. <us...@be...>]

On 22.10.2011 20:47 sfeam (Ethan Merritt) wrote:
> 
> Currently the PostScript and PDF terminals write a prologue record
>   /Title (<filename>)
> but there have been many complaints from people who don't like the
> way that some external tools handle this.  They suffer from a problem
> equivalent to the one you originally complained about, that the
> title of the first [last?] plot is displayed as if it were the title
> of the whole document the plot is embedded in.  If you look on the
> Feature Request and Bug trackers, you'll find requests to change
> this and not write a Title record at all.  

I think, there had also been people complaining about the automatic
insertion of the author's login name in postscript files.

So this <title> we are talking about, has a different purpose than the
one of "set title", the filename is not appropriate, and any terminal
option does not fit the usual scripting workflow.

A possiblity would then be, like Peter suggested, to add an option
'title' (and maybe also other file properties like 'author' and 'desc')
to "set output", or even a single 'set ...' option which handles
different file meta data and to have the current behavior as fallback if
the new options are not used.

Christoph

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[<pl...@pi...>]

On 10/22/11 23:01, sfeam (Ethan Merritt) wrote:
> On Saturday, 22 October 2011, pl...@pi... wrote:
>> So the svg title is not so much a property of the plot but the output
>> file.
>
> Part of the problem here is that the SVG spec doesn't say what<title>
> is supposed to do.  It is left up to the implementation of the viewer.
> Furthermore, the<title>  element is valid at multiple levels, and the
> viewer is apparently free to different things with the titles at different
> levels.
>
> Let me recap.
>
> Up until our current discussion, the<title>  element was being used
> inside the group bounding each indivual plot within the graph.
> The behavior I observe for firefox/chrome/konqueror/opera is that
> when the title is encountered at this level it is used to provide
> a pop-up information box on mouse-over.  Firefox, but not the other
> browsers, _also_ uses the title of the first group to label the
> window.  I actually think that's a bug, but the spec does allow it.
>
Agreed , this seems more accidental than intentional. I Opera's use of 
the file name in absence of a top level title is more appropriate. It 
does not mean no title is the best content to generate. If file name is 
determined to be the best text to display , title should be set to that.

> The current discussion is about adding a<title>  element at the top level,
> which is a different thing.  Firefox/opera/chrome, but not konqueror,
> use a title at the top level to label the window if it is present.
> I've added that to the svg terminal driver in CVS.
>
> There's a wrinkle, however.  It actually makes more sense to have the
> window label match the file name, which is what all the browsers except
> firefox were doing before.  The reason I think this is that every file
> is guaranteed to get a new name,
A unique title for each file would be useful. That is what I would like 
to see in short tab titles in FF and Opera.

To be clear about the tabs I'm referring to that can only display a 
short text here's a screen-shot. This is the immediate point of 
reference when viewing several files at a time and is where the need for 
a shorter text is than the filename or the graph title is seen.

http://piments.com/tmp/opera-tabs.png

The three files here are:
1. A web based URL with an svg from gnuplot before recent changes.
2. An html wrapper on a local server that opera decides to display the 
whole URL not the fn.
3. File with "name" based top level svg title.

> whereas unless you keep closing and
> re-opening the terminal the "name" attribute will remain the same across
> files.
Which suggests, as I said in my last post, that this is a property, not 
of the terminal nor of the plot but of the file. It should probably be 
an option to set output.

Many of the problems an inconsistencies seem to derive from the fact 
that this option is tied to the terminal , which is sufficient for 
trivial cases like one plot at each invocation of the terminal but falls 
apart with more complex stuff like the demos.

> This means that for all files except the first one, the name
> shown in the browser window bar will probably be wrong.
>
> The code I added to CVS loads the top level title with "name".
> But for the reasons stated above I'm not entirely happy with that.
> Either the file name or the plot title (from "set title") makes
> more sense to me.
>
> 	Ethan
>
That solution seems an improvement but has the short-comings you pointed 
out for complex plots.

I don't use the other terminals enough to comment on how this affects 
the other issue that have causes complaints. Neither to I do complex 
multiplots. You clearly have a much more thorough understanding having 
worked closely on all this.

Your complaints seem to indicate that , whatever the text finally is, it 
cannot be derived from a one off option in set terminal.

Since this svg title is an attribute of an svg file (that can then have 
derivative names for graphs and plot lines in that file ) and you see a 
need for that name to be unique to each file the obvious and correct 
place to set this would seem to be when the file is opened, ie as an 
option to set output.

Could you comment on whether that would fit the logic of more complex plots?

Peter.

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[sfeam (E. Merritt) <eam...@gm...>]

On Saturday, 22 October 2011, pl...@pi... wrote:
> So the svg title is not so much a property of the plot but the output 
> file.

Part of the problem here is that the SVG spec doesn't say what <title>
is supposed to do.  It is left up to the implementation of the viewer.
Furthermore, the <title> element is valid at multiple levels, and the
viewer is apparently free to different things with the titles at different
levels.

Let me recap.

Up until our current discussion, the <title> element was being used
inside the group bounding each indivual plot within the graph.
The behavior I observe for firefox/chrome/konqueror/opera is that
when the title is encountered at this level it is used to provide
a pop-up information box on mouse-over.  Firefox, but not the other
browsers, _also_ uses the title of the first group to label the
window.  I actually think that's a bug, but the spec does allow it.

The current discussion is about adding a <title> element at the top level,
which is a different thing.  Firefox/opera/chrome, but not konqueror,
use a title at the top level to label the window if it is present.
I've added that to the svg terminal driver in CVS.

There's a wrinkle, however.  It actually makes more sense to have the 
window label match the file name, which is what all the browsers except 
firefox were doing before.  The reason I think this is that every file 
is guaranteed to get a new name, whereas unless you keep closing and 
re-opening the terminal the "name" attribute will remain the same across
files. This means that for all files except the first one, the name
shown in the browser window bar will probably be wrong.

The code I added to CVS loads the top level title with "name".
But for the reasons stated above I'm not entirely happy with that.
Either the file name or the plot title (from "set title") makes
more sense to me.

	Ethan

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[sfeam (E. Merritt) <eam...@gm...>]

On Saturday, 22 October 2011, pl...@pi... wrote:
> print GNUPLOT "set term svg enhanced font 'arial,10' mouse name 
> \"$name"."_$plot\" jsdir '.' size 600,400 dynamic\n";
> 
> so it seems that you are using the 'name' feature in set term  svg to 
> create the names you want. That presumably requires the reopening of the 
> terminal that you were objecting to earlier.

It does not.  Just look at the script.  The terminal is opened
only once per demo.

	Ethan

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[<pl...@pi...>]

On 10/22/11 20:38, sfeam (Ethan Merritt) wrote:
> On Saturday, 22 October 2011, pl...@pi... wrote:
>> I see on your demo titles of the following form:
>>
>> <g id="simple_3_plot_1"><title>simple_3_plot_1</title>
>>
>> could you explain how that is created or post a link to the scripts that
>> make it?
>
> The demos are all in the distribution package under .../demo/
> and the scripts for generating the html pages from them
> are under .../demo/html/
> There are parallel scripts and Makefiles for png svg and canvas.
>
> 	Ethan
>

thanks,

print GNUPLOT "set term svg enhanced font 'arial,10' mouse name 
\"$name"."_$plot\" jsdir '.' size 600,400 dynamic\n";

so it seems that you are using the 'name' feature in set term  svg to 
create the names you want. That presumably requires the reopening of the 
terminal that you were objecting to earlier. It would also mean a 
rewrite if this is moved to plot.

While each of your arguments has merit it seems something will break 
what ever is done.

Name in canvas is out in stable so that's a bit inconvenient. If it was 
just a rename to 'title' name could be retained as pseudo for 
compatibility.

Unless I'm misreading what is being done, your objection to closing svg 
terminal would not affect your scripts which seem to do this already.

 >    set term foo
 >
 >      set output 'plot1.foo'
 >      set title "Graphs AB"
 >      plot "A.dat" title "A", "B.dat" title "B"
 >
 >      set output 'plot2.foo'
 >      set title "Graphs CDE"
 >      plot "C.dat", "D.dat", "E.dat"
 >

So the svg title is not so much a property of the plot but the output 
file. Perhaps the title option should be there and rendered when it has 
meaning for the terminal .This relates to your earlier comment about 
making it visible to the terminals via a new interface.

Is this also true for the other cases of title , would a new approach 
here address the issues with pdf etc ?


Peter.

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[sfeam (E. Merritt) <eam...@gm...>]

On Saturday, 22 October 2011, pl...@pi... wrote:
> There is a logical inconsistency it would seem. The svg title is more a
> property of the plot than of the terminal.

That's the way I understand it.
 
> Correct me if I am wrong but I suppose all the features we are
> discussing here are established in stable releases and hence pose a
> problem of backwards compatibility if they are changed. Specifically ,
> does that apply to the 'name' option?

The mousing version of the svg terminal is only in the CVS branch,
so no, this doesn't affect svg in the released version 4.4

But the equivalent "name" option support to support mousing is
in the released version of the canvas terminal.

Currently the PostScript and PDF terminals write a prologue record
  /Title (<filename>)
but there have been many complaints from people who don't like the
way that some external tools handle this.  They suffer from a problem
equivalent to the one you originally complained about, that the
title of the first [last?] plot is displayed as if it were the title
of the whole document the plot is embedded in.  If you look on the
Feature Request and Bug trackers, you'll find requests to change
this and not write a Title record at all.  

	Ethan

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[sfeam (E. Merritt) <eam...@gm...>]

On Saturday, 22 October 2011, pl...@pi... wrote:
> I see on your demo titles of the following form:
> 
> <g id="simple_3_plot_1" ><title>simple_3_plot_1</title>
> 
> could you explain how that is created or post a link to the scripts that
> make it?

The demos are all in the distribution package under .../demo/
and the scripts for generating the html pages from them
are under .../demo/html/
There are parallel scripts and Makefiles for png svg and canvas.

	Ethan

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[sfeam (E. Merritt) <eam...@gm...>]

On Saturday, 22 October 2011, Jonathan Thornburg wrote:
> >     set term foo
> >  
> >     set output 'plot1.foo'
> >     set title "Graphs AB"
> >     plot "A.dat" title "A", "B.dat" title "B"
> > 
> >     set output 'plot2.foo'
> >     set title "Graphs CDE"
> >     plot "C.dat", "D.dat", "E.dat"
> > 
> >     ... and so on for many plots
> > 
> > I don't see the advantage in requiring that the terminal be 
> > re-opened between plots [[...]]
> 
> Hmm.  If you do this, (when) does 'plit1.foo' get closed?  I was under
> the impression that this only happened when the script explicitly said
> 'set output' to close the current output file. 

It gets closed at the next 'set output', just as you say.
  set output 'plot1.foo'    # close any previous output and open plot1.foo
  ...
  set output 'plot2.foo'    # close plot1.foo and open plot2.foo

	Ethan

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[Jonathan T. <jt...@as...>]

On Sat, 22 Oct 2011, Ethan Merritt wrote:
> But this assumes that you re-open the terminal driver before 
> every plot.  That hasn't been my practice in the past, and I
> suspect I'm not the only one with gnuplot scripts in daily 
> use that don't do this.  The generic usage up until now has
> been as below, and again I point to the demo scripts, not
> because they are important per se but just because they
> illustrate the scripting style.
> 
>     set term foo
>  
>     set output 'plot1.foo'
>     set title "Graphs AB"
>     plot "A.dat" title "A", "B.dat" title "B"
> 
>     set output 'plot2.foo'
>     set title "Graphs CDE"
>     plot "C.dat", "D.dat", "E.dat"
> 
>     ... and so on for many plots
> 
> I don't see the advantage in requiring that the terminal be 
> re-opened between plots [[...]]

Hmm.  If you do this, (when) does 'plit1.foo' get closed?  I was under
the impression that this only happened when the script explicitly said
'set output' to close the current output file.  I thought I'd seen the
advice to do this in the online help somewhere, but at the moment the
closest I can find is 'help set output':

# By default, screens are displayed to the standard output. The `set output`
# command redirects the display to the specified file or device.
#
# Syntax:
#       set output {"<filename>"}
#       show output
#
# The filename must be enclosed in quotes.  If the filename is omitted, any
# output file opened by a previous invocation of `set output` will be closed
# and new output will be sent to STDOUT.

ciao,

-- 
-- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]" <jt...@as...>
   Dept of Astronomy & IUCSS, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
   "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
    powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
                                      -- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[<pl...@pi...>]

On 10/22/11 17:45, Ethan Merritt wrote:
> On Saturday, 22 October 2011, Christoph Bersch wrote:
>> On 22.10.2011 08:32 pl...@pi... wrote:
>>>
>>> My bottom line suggestion:
>>>
>>> gnuplot title is part of the final , terminal agnostic (possibly
>>> printable) output. This is truly part of the graph and can not be
>>> compromised by the user to fit in with something else. It is not
>>> necessarily a good choice for other uses. In fact, probably isn't.
>>>
>>> set terminal svg name<svg title>     changes to :   ... svg title<svg
>>> title>   to avoid potentially confusing alternative names for same thing.
>>> This will generally be much shorter than gnuplot's:  set title<visible
>>> plot title>  . Help should explain that this is the document title and
>>> that it does no appear in the graph.
>>
>> I agree with you, this looks like a good approach.
>
> But this assumes that you re-open the terminal driver before
> every plot.  That hasn't been my practice in the past, and I
> suspect I'm not the only one with gnuplot scripts in daily
> use that don't do this.  The generic usage up until now has
> been as below, and again I point to the demo scripts, not
> because they are important per se but just because they
> illustrate the scripting style.
>
>      set term foo
>
>      set output 'plot1.foo'
>      set title "Graphs AB"
>      plot "A.dat" title "A", "B.dat" title "B"
>
>      set output 'plot2.foo'
>      set title "Graphs CDE"
>      plot "C.dat", "D.dat", "E.dat"
>
>      ... and so on for many plots
>
> I don't see the advantage in requiring that the terminal be
> re-opened between plots just so that the title is updated.
> If such scripts are not re-written, then under your suggestion
> the page displaying graphs CDE will be labelled "Graphs AB".
>
> 	Ethan
>
There is a logical inconsistency it would seem. The svg title is more a
property of the plot than of the terminal.

Correct me if I am wrong but I suppose all the features we are
discussing here are established in stable releases and hence pose a
problem of backwards compatibility if they are changed. Specifically ,
does that apply to the 'name' option?


I see on your demo titles of the following form:

<g id="simple_3_plot_1" ><title>simple_3_plot_1</title>

could you explain how that is created or post a link to the scripts that
make it?

Peter.

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Saturday, 22 October 2011, Ethan Merritt wrote:
> The generic usage up until now has
> been as below, and again I point to the demo scripts, not
> because they are important per se but just because they
> illustrate the scripting style.
> 
>     set term foo
>  
>     set output 'plot1.foo'
>     set title "Graphs AB"
>     plot "A.dat" title "A", "B.dat" title "B"
> 
>     set output 'plot2.foo'
>     set title "Graphs CDE"
>     plot "C.dat", "D.dat", "E.dat"
> 
>     ... and so on for many plots

Clarification: the demo scripts are not a perfect example of this.
The wrapping html page created for each demo would be correctly labelled.  
But the individual plot files in format <foo> created by each demo script
would all have the same title.

	Ethan

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Saturday, 22 October 2011, Christoph Bersch wrote:
> On 22.10.2011 08:32 pl...@pi... wrote:
> >
> > My bottom line suggestion:
> > 
> > gnuplot title is part of the final , terminal agnostic (possibly 
> > printable) output. This is truly part of the graph and can not be 
> > compromised by the user to fit in with something else. It is not 
> > necessarily a good choice for other uses. In fact, probably isn't.
> > 
> > set terminal svg name <svg title>    changes to :   ... svg title <svg 
> > title>  to avoid potentially confusing alternative names for same thing. 
> > This will generally be much shorter than gnuplot's:  set title <visible 
> > plot title> . Help should explain that this is the document title and 
> > that it does no appear in the graph.
> 
> I agree with you, this looks like a good approach.

But this assumes that you re-open the terminal driver before 
every plot.  That hasn't been my practice in the past, and I
suspect I'm not the only one with gnuplot scripts in daily 
use that don't do this.  The generic usage up until now has
been as below, and again I point to the demo scripts, not
because they are important per se but just because they
illustrate the scripting style.

    set term foo
 
    set output 'plot1.foo'
    set title "Graphs AB"
    plot "A.dat" title "A", "B.dat" title "B"

    set output 'plot2.foo'
    set title "Graphs CDE"
    plot "C.dat", "D.dat", "E.dat"

    ... and so on for many plots

I don't see the advantage in requiring that the terminal be 
re-opened between plots just so that the title is updated.  
If such scripts are not re-written, then under your suggestion
the page displaying graphs CDE will be labelled "Graphs AB".

	Ethan

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[Christoph B. <us...@be...>]

On 22.10.2011 08:32 pl...@pi... wrote:
>
> My bottom line suggestion:
> 
> gnuplot title is part of the final , terminal agnostic (possibly 
> printable) output. This is truly part of the graph and can not be 
> compromised by the user to fit in with something else. It is not 
> necessarily a good choice for other uses. In fact, probably isn't.
> 
> set terminal svg name <svg title>    changes to :   ... svg title <svg 
> title>  to avoid potentially confusing alternative names for same thing. 
> This will generally be much shorter than gnuplot's:  set title <visible 
> plot title> . Help should explain that this is the document title and 
> that it does no appear in the graph.

I agree with you, this looks like a good approach.

This must be done separately for each terminal driver for which it makes
sense (canvas, svg, postscript, pdfcairo etc).

Christoph

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[<pl...@pi...>]

On 10/22/11 08:32, pl...@pi... wrote:
> Using
> the current name option would be preferable to make these two the same.
>
Sorry that should have read:

Using the current name option would be preferable to _making_ these two 
the same.


Please note the tab title is not a FF foible, opera does it too. (Opera 
was the first to present tabbed browsing and FF copied. Kudos to Opera 
for this innovation.)

Peter.

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[<pl...@pi...>]

On 10/21/11 20:55, Ethan A Merritt wrote:
> On Friday, October 21, 2011 01:14:52 am Christoph Bersch wrote:
>> according to the standard it is up to the viewer to decide how to
>> handle the 'title' elements:
>> <http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-SVG-20001102/struct.html#DescriptionAndTitleElements>
>>
>> Firefox seems to show the first element in the title bar, regardless of
>> where it was specified (the plot titles are inside groups), but Opera
>> uses only a title element which is placed in the top level of the
>> document structure:
>>
>> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
>> <svg width="200" height="200"
>>     xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
>>     xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
>>     <title>The SVG title</title>
>>     <rect x="5" y="5" width="190" height="190" />
>> </svg>
>>
>> So, writing the<title>  next to the<desc>  works fine.
>>
>> Christoph
>
> Thanks.  Sounds good.

Yes, that seems clearly the correct location for the document title tag.

> Do people agree that the logical thing to put here would be the
> title of the overall graph - the one controlled by "set title ..."?

Not really.

The gnuplot title would typically be too verbose.

eg "correlation of spectral FWHM to instrument slit width." , or some 
such. Graph titles are generally quite descriptive.

Graph titles have to say quite a lot. This may be far too long to be 
useful in a tab title (often  cropped off at a dozen or so characters,or 
the window title bar text which is usually length limited as well. Using 
the current name option would be preferable to make these two the same.

What I find useful as a distinct label in the browser is often some 
snippet of the full title that allows me to differentiate between 
several plot versions displayed concurrently.

eg.
gnuplot title for graph:  "As_193.7nm_HIB1365_50u50u_DC2.SD_fit"
svg name  "50u50u_DC2.SD_fit"

It is the 50u50u_DC2 that I need to see to differentiate concurrently 
displayed plots. They all start with  "As_193.7nm" as dictated by the 
title required on the report's SVG output.

I think confounding the two would be a retrograde step/

>
> The text of "set title" is not currently visible to the drivers, though.
> One possibility is to add a new terminal entry point
>    term->title(const char *text)
> I do not know off the top of my head how many terminal types would
> benefit, but it seems likely we could use it at least for svg, canvas,
> PostScript, and pdf.
>
> 	Ethan
>

Your earlier suggestion of having this as a separate option in 'set 
terminal svg ..." seemed good. If this can really be useful to several 
terminals a global approach may have some merit and making it visible to 
the driver would make sense. What is passed, however, would be subject 
to comments above.

Are the uses made of title by the other terminals functionally similar 
(eg space limitations and cropping ) such that forcing identical 
formatting makes sense?

In my context, the true graph title has very different criteria to what 
is useful in the browser tab and title bar to identify what I'm looking 
at , which does not need to be verbose but needs to be short and unique.

Similarity of name ; svg "title" and gnuplot "title" , should not be 
assumed to be a similarity of function. I think the two have very 
different requirements.


My bottom line suggestion:

gnuplot title is part of the final , terminal agnostic (possibly 
printable) output. This is truly part of the graph and can not be 
compromised by the user to fit in with something else. It is not 
necessarily a good choice for other uses. In fact, probably isn't.

set terminal svg name <svg title>    changes to :   ... svg title <svg 
title>  to avoid potentially confusing alternative names for same thing. 
This will generally be much shorter than gnuplot's:  set title <visible 
plot title> . Help should explain that this is the document title and 
that it does no appear in the graph.


If specified, that svg title would also be the base text for <g> titles 
on the  plot lines as well. (though not the id's)

new "id" or "js_id" option for svg and canvas that, when given, is the 
base for variable names with all that implies. If not given revert to 
current "gnuplot_1_x " syndrome with any needed bug fixes.

None of that should affect the namespace changes suggested elsewhere if 
that done later.

best regards, Peter.

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[Ethan A M. <sf...@us...>]

On Friday, October 21, 2011 01:14:52 am Christoph Bersch wrote:
> according to the standard it is up to the viewer to decide how to 
> handle the 'title' elements:
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-SVG-20001102/struct.html#DescriptionAndTitleElements>
> 
> Firefox seems to show the first element in the title bar, regardless of 
> where it was specified (the plot titles are inside groups), but Opera 
> uses only a title element which is placed in the top level of the 
> document structure:
> 
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
> <svg width="200" height="200"
>    xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
>    xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
>    <title>The SVG title</title>
>    <rect x="5" y="5" width="190" height="190" />
> </svg>
> 
> So, writing the <title> next to the <desc> works fine.
> 
> Christoph

Thanks.  Sounds good.  
Do people agree that the logical thing to put here would be the
title of the overall graph - the one controlled by "set title ..."?

The text of "set title" is not currently visible to the drivers, though. 
One possibility is to add a new terminal entry point 
  term->title(const char *text)
I do not know off the top of my head how many terminal types would
benefit, but it seems likely we could use it at least for svg, canvas,
PostScript, and pdf.

	Ethan

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[<pl...@pi...>]

On 10/21/11 07:43, Ethan Merritt wrote:
> On Thursday, 20 October 2011, pl...@pi... wrote:
>> The 'js_id' option is used by the interactive mouse features and must be
>> a valid javascript variable name. In short, this means it cannot
>> contains certain characters like spaces and punctuation marks. An error
>> will be produced when the graph is plotted if this is not a valid name.
>> If not specified it will be 'gnuplot_plot_n' , where n is 1 for a simple
>> plot but may be greater than one in the case of multiplot output.
>
> Just FYI, that isn't quite correct.  "n" increases with each plot in the
> graph.  So if you say
>     plot sin(x),cos(x),'foo.dat','baz.dat'
> these are plot_1, plot_2, plot_3, and plot_4.
>
> Multiplot is a whole separate issue, currently broken.
> I suppose we will have to come up with a revise scheme to handle it.
>
>> The 'title' option sets the svg<title>  element that is displayed by
>> some svg viewers in the title bar. It is not visible in the plot itself.
>> If not supplied it will be the same as 'js_id' value.
>
> This isn't quite correct either, at least for me running firefox here.
> Each plot has a title, and it pops up in a little box whenever the
> mouse is over that plot.   As you point out, the title of the first
> plot also is displayed in the top window bar.  But I think that may
> be a firefox bug/idiosyncracy.  Opera and Konqueror display the
> filename instead.  I don't mind adding something to make firefox
> display a different title, but so far I have not figured out how :-(
>
> 	Ethan
>
>
OK, I just thought you may ask for a suggestion for the help. You can 
obviously do better.

For the latter problem add a title tag after <desc> , see my other reply.

Peter.

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[<pl...@pi...>]

On 10/21/11 10:14, Christoph Bersch wrote:
> On 21.10.2011 07:43, Ethan Merritt wrote:
>>
>>> The 'title' option sets the svg<title>   element that is displayed by
>>> some svg viewers in the title bar. It is not visible in the plot itself.
>>> If not supplied it will be the same as 'js_id' value.
>>
>> This isn't quite correct either, at least for me running firefox here.
>> Each plot has a title, and it pops up in a little box whenever the
>> mouse is over that plot.   As you point out, the title of the first
>> plot also is displayed in the top window bar.  But I think that may
>> be a firefox bug/idiosyncracy.  Opera and Konqueror display the
>> filename instead.  I don't mind adding something to make firefox
>> display a different title, but so far I have not figured out how :-(
>
> I guess, the problem is, that according to the standard it is up to the
> viewer to decide how to handle the 'title' elements:
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-SVG-20001102/struct.html#DescriptionAndTitleElements>
>
> Firefox seems to show the first element in the title bar, regardless of
> where it was specified (the plot titles are inside groups), but Opera
> uses only a title element which is placed in the top level of the
> document structure:
>
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
> <svg width="200" height="200"
>     xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
>     xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
>     <title>The SVG title</title>
>     <rect x="5" y="5" width="190" height="190" />
> </svg>
>
> So, writing the<title>  next to the<desc>  works fine.
>
> Christoph
>
Thanks for the link.

<http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-SVG-20001102/struct.html#DescriptionAndTitleElements>

>>
Authors should always provide a 'title' child element to the outermost
'svg' element within a stand-alone SVG document. The 'title' child
element to an 'svg' element serves the purposes of identifying the
content of the given SVG document fragment. Since users often consult
documents out of context, authors should provide context-rich titles.
>>

It seems gnuplot should be adding such a title at the outermost level as
I suggested doing.



Peter.

Re: svg : gnuplot_plot_1

[<pl...@pi...>]

On 10/21/11 07:32, sfeam (Ethan Merritt) wrote:
> On Thursday, 20 October 2011, pl...@pi... wrote:
>> In this context the title is quite visible and underlines look a bit
>> untidy. Hence my interest in getting a more presentable title displayed
>> by the browser.
>
> So I just tried to implement this, and I can't get it to work.
> Maybe your version of Firefox is different?
>
> When I open the svg file in Firefox the behaviour of the individual
> <title = "name_plot_1">  elements works as intended:  when the mouse
> is over the plot with that title, a little box pops up displaying
> the title.
>
> Separate from that, the title of the first plot in the file is also
> displayed in the top border window decoration, which is I think
> what you are talking about, right?  (I'm running KDE with a theme
> that has this; I don't know what happens if you're running a desktop
> or theme that doesn't place an extra decoration bar on the top).
>

OK, I have attached a screenshot that probably won't get through the ML 
but you are on CC so at least you should get it.

I see FF using svg title in two places. The browser window title  bar as 
you describe above.
With an html document this shows the html title so this seems consistent 
and correct.

Also I see it in the browser tab. I suspect this is configurable in FF 
options so you may or may not see that.

( this is firefox 3.6.20 )

I have given up using opera for svg since it opens local svg files as 
text. A bug I reported over a year ago and remains AFAIK unaddressed. I 
have to upload somewhere and access via http so I no long bother.


I manually edited the svg as follows and FF tab and title bar now show 
the modified title with spaces.
	<g id="25u50u_25cZZ_plot_1" ><title>25u50u 25cZZ plot 1</title>

It seems FF is just grabbing the first occurrence of ANY title element, 
this may not be that logical. If the intent is to have an svg title for 
the file maybe that can best be addressed by adding a new svg element 
near the head of the file.

I just tried this between <desc> and <script> tags and it works. I 
believe that is correct usage but you may like to check.

I suspect FF picking up the plot element's title may be a bug , but 
explicitly adding a title to the file would seem to be the correct 
approach for situations where a viewer displays it. This also works with 
Opera , it is only displaying the file name as you noted because there 
is no title tag in the document. This is probably what FF should be 
doing as well.

So adding a new title tag for the document as a whole seems the right 
thing to do. A trivial mod.

Using any specified "title" option also as the base text for the plot 
titles would allow control of the text shown in the hint box you 
describe too.

(I don't think there are any distro/desktop issues complicating this.)

Regards, Peter.



> But when I tried adding an additional title in various svg elements
> near the top of the file to see if that replaced the one on the
> window border - it didn't. So at this moment I don't know how to do it.
> If you have a sample file produced by some other program that behaves
> the way you like, why don't you send it to me and I'll see if I can
> figure out how they did it.
>
> 	cheers,
>
> 		Ethan
>
>