gnuplot-beta

confirming X behavior

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

Just confirming a change/bug-fix here.  I'm guessing it is Ethan's 2006-05-20 change "New X resources file..." that now causes the gnuplot X window to appear white on my system as opposed to gray.  (Fine with me.)  Also, the gnuplot window no longer comes to the top, by default, whenever a plot command is executed.

Dan

Re: confirming X behavior

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

On Wednesday 24 May 2006 02:24 pm, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
> Just confirming a change/bug-fix here.  I'm guessing it is Ethan's
> 2006-05-20 change "New X resources file..." that now causes the
> gnuplot X window to appear white on my system as opposed to gray. 

Hmm. That is possible, but if so then your system is configured
differently than mine.  My system does not load such files 
automatically; only on request.  On the other hand, I have the gnuplot
background set to white anyhow, so that particular change I wouldn't
have noticed.

I view such files more as documentation than anything else.
You can browse the file to see what X resource options are available.
As I said, they aren't actually read in and executed on my systems.

> Also, the gnuplot window no longer comes to the top,
> by default, whenever a plot command is executed.

That would be the line
  gnuplot*raise:        off

The principle of least surprise suggests that maybe I should
either flip this to 'on' or comment out the line.  Thanks for
reporting the issue.

Any others?  Have you tried out the dashed lines?
They were always there, but up until now there has been no
convenient way to turn them on.


-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle WA

Re: confirming X behavior

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

Ethan Merritt wrote:

> Any others?  Have you tried out the dashed lines?
> They were always there, but up until now there has been no
> convenient way to turn them on.

Funny you should say, because I'm investigating right now.  In some cases I'm seeing dashed lines for the axis, sometimes not.  (See attached.)  Sometimes the plots themselves now have dashed blue and purple lines (but solid red), sometimes not.  I think my running as superuser in one window and not-superuser in another may be what is going on.

Dan

Re: confirming X behavior

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

On Wednesday 24 May 2006 02:42 pm, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
> Ethan Merritt wrote:
> > Have you tried out the dashed lines?
>
> Funny you should say, because I'm investigating right now.  In some
> cases I'm seeing dashed lines for the axis, sometimes not.  (See
> attached.)  Sometimes the plots themselves now have dashed blue and
> purple lines (but solid red), sometimes not.  I think my running as
> superuser in one window and not-superuser in another may be what is
> going on.

I can't think why being superuser should make a difference per se.
You may have different initialization files in the respective
login directories, but the X resources are a property of the server
rather than the individual user.  So unless your two windows are
somehow using two different X servers, they should act the same.

That's a different question from logging out and then logging in
again as a different user.  In that case you may load a different
set of X resources into the server during login.



-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle WA

Re: confirming X behavior

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

Ethan Merritt wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 May 2006 02:42 pm, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
> 
>>Ethan Merritt wrote:
>>
>>>Have you tried out the dashed lines?
>>
>>Funny you should say, because I'm investigating right now.  In some
>>cases I'm seeing dashed lines for the axis, sometimes not.  (See
>>attached.)  Sometimes the plots themselves now have dashed blue and
>>purple lines (but solid red), sometimes not.  I think my running as
>>superuser in one window and not-superuser in another may be what is
>>going on.
> 
> 
> I can't think why being superuser should make a difference per se.
> You may have different initialization files in the respective
> login directories, but the X resources are a property of the server
> rather than the individual user.  So unless your two windows are
> somehow using two different X servers, they should act the same.
> 
> That's a different question from logging out and then logging in
> again as a different user.  In that case you may load a different
> set of X resources into the server during login.

I think I see where the dashed lines are coming from.  When I go back now to an older version of gnuplot the lines are coming out as dashes.  (Newer versions have solid lines.)  It has been for the longest time that these were solid lines.  (I don't know, maybe they were supposed to be dashed all along.)

Does the most recent gnuplot installation create or overwrite an .Xdefaults file?

And still, there is the issue that the axis line is not solid in the latest CVS where the default seemed to be dashed line before.

Dan

Re: confirming X behavior

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

On Wednesday 24 May 2006 03:12 pm, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
>
> I think I see where the dashed lines are coming from.  When I go back
> now to an older version of gnuplot the lines are coming out as
> dashes.

Are you remembering to set GNUPLOT_DRIVER_DIR to the appropriate
directory when testing new/old versions?  Mixing different versions
of gnuplot and gnuplot_x11 will yield poorly-defined behaviour.

> It has been for the longest time that these were solid lines.
> (I don't know, maybe they were supposed to be dashed all along.)

For a long time the behavior has been that x11.trm didn't know
anything about dashes, while gnuplot_x11 would use dashes if they
were provided as X resources and solid lines otherwise.
I have added an explicit toggle for solid/dashed to x11.trm,
just as other drivers like post.trm and emf.trm have.  The default
state of the toggle is "solid", which is what you always had before
unless you loaded dashed line descriptions into the X resources
database. So...

Before:
    - Default was dashed lines, but only if they are in Xresources
    - No Xresources file unless you created your own
    -> result was default to solid
Now:
    - Default is solid lines
    - Xresources file defines the dash patterns
    -> result is default to solid

> Does the most recent gnuplot installation create or overwrite an
> .Xdefaults file?

No

> And still, there is the issue that the axis line is not solid in the
> latest CVS where the default seemed to be dashed line before.

The axis line is supposed to be an exception (dotted even when the
other line types are solid).  It is possible that there is a bug in
that it gets disabled along with the other dash types. I'll check.

-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle WA