gnuplot-beta

problems zooming into plot region

[Mojca M. <moj...@gm...>]

Hello,

I'm curious whether I'm the only one experiencing this problem or if
this appears to be "a feature" rather than a bug in the eyes of
developers.

If I use
   plot [0:] 'datafile.dat' ...
then I'm unable to zoom into the desired region of a plot with a mouse
by selecting the desired rectangle. It zooms properly to the y axis
and (usually) to the right of x axis, but the left of x axis always
stays at zero which is a bit annoying.

Also, the mouse movement (moving wheel to left & right) which usually
moves the graph to left & right is now zooming in & out instead of
moving the graph.

Thank you,
    Mojca

Re: problems zooming into plot region

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

On 09/24/12 16:58, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm curious whether I'm the only one experiencing this problem or if
> this appears to be "a feature" rather than a bug in the eyes of
> developers.
>
> If I use
>     plot [0:] 'datafile.dat' ...
> then I'm unable to zoom into the desired region of a plot with a mouse
> by selecting the desired rectangle. It zooms properly to the y axis
> and (usually) to the right of x axis, but the left of x axis always
> stays at zero which is a bit annoying.
>
> Also, the mouse movement (moving wheel to left & right) which usually
> moves the graph to left & right is now zooming in & out instead of
> moving the graph.
>
> Thank you,
>      Mojca
>
yes. I thought this was a bug too. Once a range is defined explicitly, 
mouse zooming will not over ride it.

It is a feature, though I find it obstructive.  I would expect a direct 
user interaction to over-ride any predetermined range.

I don't know if there are circumstances where allowing the user to zoom 
where he needs to would be detrimental. Perhaps s/o could suggest where 
this may be the wrong thing to allow.

/peter.

Re: problems zooming into plot region

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

On Monday, 24 September 2012, pl...@pi... wrote:
> On 09/24/12 16:58, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I'm curious whether I'm the only one experiencing this problem or if
> > this appears to be "a feature" rather than a bug in the eyes of
> > developers.
> >
> > If I use
> >     plot [0:] 'datafile.dat' ...
> > then I'm unable to zoom into the desired region of a plot with a mouse
> > by selecting the desired rectangle. It zooms properly to the y axis
> > and (usually) to the right of x axis, but the left of x axis always
> > stays at zero which is a bit annoying.
> >      Mojca
> >
> yes. I thought this was a bug too. Once a range is defined explicitly, 
> mouse zooming will not over ride it.
> 
> It is a feature, though I find it obstructive.  I would expect a direct 
> user interaction to over-ride any predetermined range.
> 
> I don't know if there are circumstances where allowing the user to zoom 
> where he needs to would be detrimental. Perhaps s/o could suggest where 
> this may be the wrong thing to allow.
> /peter.


Bug or feature or historical happenstance, this long-standing behavior has
now changed in the CVS version since about 10 days ago.  Please try it out
and see if it now behaves more agreeably.  I would like to hear some
feedback about whether the change is good or bad before deciding whether
to keep it that way for an eventual release in 4.8/5.0.

	Ethan

Re: problems zooming into plot region

[Petr M. <mi...@ph...>]

> I'm curious whether I'm the only one experiencing this problem or if
> this appears to be "a feature" rather than a bug in the eyes of
> developers.
>
> If I use
>   plot [0:] 'datafile.dat' ...
> then I'm unable to zoom into the desired region of a plot with a mouse
> by selecting the desired rectangle. It zooms properly to the y axis
> and (usually) to the right of x axis, but the left of x axis always
> stays at zero which is a bit annoying.

This does neither work by design:
 	gnuplot> plot [1:10] sin(x)/x
 	gnuplot> set xrange [5:8]; replot

So why do you use   plot [x1:x2]  instead of  set xrange [x1:x2]?

Anayway, Ethan has recently pushed a patch for 4.7 that allows zooming in 
both axes even if you explicitly disable it via plot [] []


> Also, the mouse movement (moving wheel to left & right) which usually
> moves the graph to left & right is now zooming in & out instead of
> moving the graph.

Wheel left and right? Do you have a trackball? I thought it works just as 
mouse upside-down.

The zooming in-out by +/- hotkeys and mouse wheel up/down implements my 
patch
   [ gnuplot-Patches-3537423 ] zoom by mouse wheel and hotkeys
but it's not yet in sources so you have probably applied it yourself.

The patch needs some testing ... because people using mouse with wheel like 
zoom-in/out but people using touchpad expect scrolling instead (even though 
it is rather useless for 2d graphs).

---
Petr

Re: problems zooming into plot region

[Mojca M. <moj...@gm...>]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 8:07 AM, Petr Mikulik wrote:
>> I'm curious whether I'm the only one experiencing this problem or if
>> this appears to be "a feature" rather than a bug in the eyes of
>> developers.
>>
>> If I use
>>   plot [0:] 'datafile.dat' ...
>> then I'm unable to zoom into the desired region of a plot with a mouse
>> by selecting the desired rectangle. It zooms properly to the y axis
>> and (usually) to the right of x axis, but the left of x axis always
>> stays at zero which is a bit annoying.
>
> This does neither work by design:
>         gnuplot> plot [1:10] sin(x)/x
>         gnuplot> set xrange [5:8]; replot
>
> So why do you use   plot [x1:x2]  instead of  set xrange [x1:x2]?

I find plot [x1:] more intuitive, shorter, one command less to write
and faster to change from one command to the other.

> Anayway, Ethan has recently pushed a patch for 4.7 that allows zooming in
> both axes even if you explicitly disable it via plot [] []

I wasn't aware of that. Thanks to both for pointing it out. I'll test
and report. I usually use the trunk version, but I was playing with
4.6 branch.

>> Also, the mouse movement (moving wheel to left & right) which usually
>> moves the graph to left & right is now zooming in & out instead of
>> moving the graph.
>
> Wheel left and right? Do you have a trackball? I thought it works just as
> mouse upside-down.

I have a trackpad (http://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/).

> The zooming in-out by +/- hotkeys and mouse wheel up/down implements my
> patch
>   [ gnuplot-Patches-3537423 ] zoom by mouse wheel and hotkeys
> but it's not yet in sources so you have probably applied it yourself.

No, I didn't apply any patch (even though I still want to test your
patch more extensively) - I was using 4.6 stable branch. In X11 the
usual mouse wheel is sending out buttons 4 and 5 for scrolling up and
down, while 6 and 7 are for scrolling left and right. In wxt the
following code moves left & right for example:

	mouse_button = (event.GetWheelRotation() > 0 ? 4 : 5);
#if wxCHECK_VERSION(2, 9, 0)
	/* GetWheelAxis: 0 is the Y axis, 1 is the X axis. */
	if (event.GetWheelAxis() > 0)
	    mouse_button += 2;
#endif
	wxt_exec_event(GE_buttonpress, x, y, mouse_button, 0, this->GetId());


> The patch needs some testing ... because people using mouse with wheel like
> zoom-in/out but people using touchpad expect scrolling instead

Yes, exactly. I can use another "mouse gesture" to zoom in and out.

> (even though it is rather useless for 2d graphs).

Scrolling left and right is not useless for 2d graphs (maybe scrolling
up and down is way less usable, but left and right is handy). But then
I admit that it is kind of useless in gnuplot which reads and
recalculates the data over and over again for every few pixels I want
to scroll. Scrolling is actually prohibitively slow. If I have 1000
points on the graph, I don't need scrolling. But when I have 1-10
million points, I can basically forget about scrolling.

(Also, qt is prohibitively slow and totally confusing when resizing
the plot. When I want to resize the window to fill almost full screen,
Qt probably sends a couple of hundred "resize events" and gnuplot has
to recalculate the whole plot about a few hundred times. X11 basically
waits until I completely resize the window and draws some nonsense
below [copies of original image] and only redraws the graphic once or
twice, not hundred times.)

Slightly off-topic: what is the magic key combination (or another
trick) to restore the original x and y range (the one set before
moving & zooming the graph with the mouse)? I'm now using "p" key, but
that takes forever to get back to the initial range.

Mojca

Re: problems zooming into plot region

[Petr M. <mi...@ph...>]

>> This does neither work by design:
>>         gnuplot> plot [1:10] sin(x)/x
>>         gnuplot> set xrange [5:8]; replot
>>
>> So why do you use   plot [x1:x2]  instead of  set xrange [x1:x2]?
>
> I find plot [x1:] more intuitive, shorter, one command less to write
> and faster to change from one command to the other.

I see, my findings are exactly opposite :-)

>>> Also, the mouse movement (moving wheel to left & right) which usually
>>> moves the graph to left & right is now zooming in & out instead of
>>> moving the graph.
>>
>> Wheel left and right? Do you have a trackball? I thought it works just as
>> mouse upside-down.
>
> I have a trackpad (http://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/).
>
>> The zooming in-out by +/- hotkeys and mouse wheel up/down implements my
>> patch
>>   [ gnuplot-Patches-3537423 ] zoom by mouse wheel and hotkeys
>> but it's not yet in sources so you have probably applied it yourself.
>
> No, I didn't apply any patch (even though I still want to test your
> patch more extensively) - I was using 4.6 stable branch. In X11 the
> usual mouse wheel is sending out buttons 4 and 5 for scrolling up and
> down, while 6 and 7 are for scrolling left and right. In wxt the
> following code moves left & right for example:
>
> 	mouse_button = (event.GetWheelRotation() > 0 ? 4 : 5);
> #if wxCHECK_VERSION(2, 9, 0)
> 	/* GetWheelAxis: 0 is the Y axis, 1 is the X axis. */
> 	if (event.GetWheelAxis() > 0)
> 	    mouse_button += 2;
> #endif
> 	wxt_exec_event(GE_buttonpress, x, y, mouse_button, 0, this->GetId());
>
>
>> The patch needs some testing ... because people using mouse with wheel like
>> zoom-in/out but people using touchpad expect scrolling instead
>
> Yes, exactly. I can use another "mouse gesture" to zoom in and out.
>
>> (even though it is rather useless for 2d graphs).
>
> Scrolling left and right is not useless for 2d graphs (maybe scrolling
> up and down is way less usable, but left and right is handy).

I meant the vertical scrolling in 2d graphs - zoom (around mouse cursor) is 
more useful.


> Slightly off-topic: what is the magic key combination (or another
> trick) to restore the original x and y range (the one set before
> moving & zooming the graph with the mouse)? I'm now using "p" key, but
> that takes forever to get back to the initial range.

That's the 'u' hotkey:
u = unzoom
a = autoscale
p = previous
n = next

---
Petr

Re: problems zooming into plot region

[Mojca M. <moj...@gm...>]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 8:02 AM, sfeam (Ethan Merritt) wrote:
>> On 09/24/12 16:58, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > I'm curious whether I'm the only one experiencing this problem or if
>> > this appears to be "a feature" rather than a bug in the eyes of
>> > developers.
>> >
>> > If I use
>> >     plot [0:] 'datafile.dat' ...
>> > then I'm unable to zoom into the desired region of a plot with a mouse
>
> Bug or feature or historical happenstance, this long-standing behavior has
> now changed in the CVS version since about 10 days ago.  Please try it out
> and see if it now behaves more agreeably.

Thank you very much for the hint. I didn't know about that change and
it actually works much better than in previous versions.

> I would like to hear some
> feedback about whether the change is good or bad before deciding whether
> to keep it that way for an eventual release in 4.8/5.0.

To me it was a huge improvement. I'll use the trunk version for a
while to see if I spot any other problems, but from the first
impressions I would give a strong vote to keep the new behaviour.

... and thanks to Petr for the hint about the 'u' key to get back to
the original range. But then my next question would be - how can I see
those shortcuts? I was playing with "help mouse", but that didn't
leave me anywhere.

Thank you,
   Mojca

Re: problems zooming into plot region

[Bastian M. <bma...@we...>]

Am 25.09.2012 13:26, schrieb Mojca Miklavec:>
 > ... and thanks to Petr for the hint about the 'u' key to get back to
 > the original range. But then my next question would be - how can I see
 > those shortcuts? I was playing with "help mouse", but that didn't
 > leave me anywhere.

Try pressing 'h' in a plot window.
	Bastian


 >
 > Thank you,
 >     Mojca
 >

Re: problems zooming into plot region

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

On 09/25/12 13:26, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 8:02 AM, sfeam (Ethan Merritt) wrote:
>>> On 09/24/12 16:58, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> I'm curious whether I'm the only one experiencing this problem or if
>>>> this appears to be "a feature" rather than a bug in the eyes of
>>>> developers.
>>>>
>>>> If I use
>>>>      plot [0:] 'datafile.dat' ...
>>>> then I'm unable to zoom into the desired region of a plot with a mouse
>>
>> Bug or feature or historical happenstance, this long-standing behavior has
>> now changed in the CVS version since about 10 days ago.  Please try it out
>> and see if it now behaves more agreeably.
>
> Thank you very much for the hint. I didn't know about that change and
> it actually works much better than in previous versions.
>
>> I would like to hear some
>> feedback about whether the change is good or bad before deciding whether
>> to keep it that way for an eventual release in 4.8/5.0.
>
> To me it was a huge improvement. I'll use the trunk version for a
> while to see if I spot any other problems, but from the first
> impressions I would give a strong vote to keep the new behaviour.
>

Yes, I also find this to be a lot better than the old behaviour. It 
seems obvious if I am trying to set the zoom with the mouse, that I do 
want to do that. Not only is it very disrouting when one axis does not 
change as expected, it meant the user can't control zoom manually which 
is unhelpful.

regards, Peter.

Re: problems zooming into plot region

[Petr M. <mi...@ph...>]

> ... and thanks to Petr for the hint about the 'u' key to get back to
> the original range. But then my next question would be - how can I see
> those shortcuts? I was playing with "help mouse", but that didn't
> leave me anywhere.

The 'h' is shown in the welcome message after gnuplot start-up:

        G N U P L O T
         ...
        immediate help:   type "help"  (plot window: hit 'h')


>> I would like to hear some
>> feedback about whether the change is good or bad before deciding whether
>> to keep it that way for an eventual release in 4.8/5.0.
>
> To me it was a huge improvement. I'll use the trunk version for a

I think you can add it to 4.6.1.

---
Petr

Re: problems zooming into plot region

[Mojca M. <moj...@gm...>]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 5:00 PM, Petr Mikulik wrote:
>> ... and thanks to Petr for the hint about the 'u' key to get back to
>> the original range. But then my next question would be - how can I see
>> those shortcuts? I was playing with "help mouse", but that didn't
>> leave me anywhere.
>
> The 'h' is shown in the welcome message after gnuplot start-up:
>
>        G N U P L O T
>         ...
>        immediate help:   type "help"  (plot window: hit 'h')

I believe that I was hitting "h" before, but for some reason it didn't
work. Maybe there was something odd going on (maybe I accidentally
switched to a different keyboard or changed the terminal in the
meantime).

My next feature request will probably be to add an icon (to zoom to
original region) to the top of Qt terminal ;)

I also just remembered that wxt has a very intuitive way to trigger
help. It has a question mark in the GUI and that one suggests to hit
"h". Something similar should be added to Qt terminal.

>>> I would like to hear some
>>> feedback about whether the change is good or bad before deciding whether
>>> to keep it that way for an eventual release in 4.8/5.0.
>>
>>
>> To me it was a huge improvement. I'll use the trunk version for a
>
> I think you can add it to 4.6.1.

I would be very happy for that as well.

Mojca