Re: Suggestions needed for a new command

[Harald H. <h.h...@tu...>]

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005, Ethan Merritt wrote:

> > I would prefer 'set style plot' because it really would open the way to
> > different layouts, as shown in the attachment. The DIN variant 2 is
> > strange but defined in the standard. I normally use DIN variant 1 which is
> > hard to get using current gnuplot because you always have to adapt the
> > position by hand.
>
> You have convinced me. Wow, I had no idea that DIN extended to telling
> people how to make their plots.

They standardise everything. :-)

> So the proposal so far is for a command with options
>
> 	set style plotlayout {bordered|axes|DIN1|DIN2|...}
>
> The default would be "set plotstyle bordered", which is what we have now.

This really sounds good.

> We could also consider allowing some suboptions to further tune the overall
> appearance. I have been keeping a list of requested features that
> would be easy to implement but have no obvious place to be specified
> in the current command set:
> 	{no}colorkeytitles
> 	{linespacing <n>}
> 	{background <rgbcolor>}

The valid suboptions have to be dependent on the chosen plotlayout. For
example, the DIN layouts need offsets, lengths, and styles for the arrows,
while a background seems unlogical for plots without a border.

The question now is if different plotlayouts should use different routines
to parse the command line or if it should be one routine which tests for
every used option if it is valid for this layout (as for example the
postscript-based terminals do).

What do you mean by linespacing?

> > Another thing I have always planned but not programmed is to provide the
> > position of an axis:
> >
> > set xzeroaxis at 3.5 # in 2D
> > set xzeroaxis at 3.5,4.2 # in 3D
> >
> > This would enable users to use zeroaxis also for plots that have a range
> > which does not include zero and for log-scale plots.
>
> I like that suggestion also, particularly if it means we can
> deprecate "set ticslevel", which no one can ever remember.

And we should fix the strange behaviour of zeroaxis when an axis is near
to the range limits, if the border is off. See the attached example.

Now, the question is who programmes what. I volunteer to programme the
DIN 1 style. I think we should just leave out DIN 2 since it really is a
strange thing to replace the last but one tic on an axis by its unit.

Best regards
Harald

-- 
Harald Harders
h.h...@tu...
http://www.harald-harders.de