Re: New PostScript sizing options [was: Argh: Why are arrows clipped to the graph?]

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

Hi,

On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, Ethan Merritt wrote:
> Sorry, I should have posted a specific announcement here as well as
> to the SourceForge tracking list.
>
> Please give a thorough workout to SourceForge patch #1356114
>
> 	set term post size <foo>in,<baz>in
>
> Also handles units of cm or pixels.
[[...]]

Thanks, this looks like just what I was looking for.
I'm tied up for the next 2-3 weeks, but shortly after that I'll
try it out.

Of course, for _portable_ gnuplot scripts (ones which I can put into
our local cvs repository, and expect my coauthors to be able to run
with whatever random gnuplot version they have) I'll have to stick to
the old 'set size > 1' for another year or two, but in the long run,
I think Ethan's patch is a clean solution to the problem.

ciao,

-- 
-- Jonathan Thornburg <jt...@ae...>
    Max-Planck-Institut fuer Gravitationsphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut),
    Golm, Germany, "Old Europe"     http://www.aei.mpg.de/~jthorn/home.html
    "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
>
>
> Here is a repeat announcement
>
>
> Initial Comment:
> Enough talking about it, here is actual code.
>
> Synopsis
> ========
> Specify explicit bounding box for postscript-based
> terminals in inches, centimeters, or points.
> e.g. default is equivalent to
>       set term post size 10in, 7in
>
> Details
> =======
> Adds a parsing routine parse_term_size(*x, *y,
> default_units) that can be called by any terminal
> driver.  I've only implemented it for post.trm and
> gd.trm, but any terminal that already allows a size can
> be trivially converted to use the new routine.
>
> Default_units is either INCHES, CM, or PIXELS.
> This tells the routine how to interpreat a bare number
> in the size spec.  Pixel-based terminals will normally
> select PIXELS as the default units, but post.trm
> defaults to INCHES.
>
> This will get you US paper size "legal":
>   set term post landscape size 14, 8.5
>
> This will get you paper size A4:
>   set term post size 29.7cm, 21.0cm
>
> And this will get you a 3 inch by 5 inch PNG image if
> display on a monitor with approximately 72 dpi resolution:
>  set term png size 3in, 5in
>
> Notes
> ======
>
> We need some mechanism to specify a resolution other
> than 72dpi for pixel-based terminals.
>
> With this in place, there should never be a need for
> specifying size > 1 to postscript terminals.  This
> mechanism gets the bounding box right for large plots,
> which the old mechanism never did.
>
> Please give this a workout.  I've tested it, but I
> don't have any old scripts that produced oversize
> postscript images, so I can't easily compare backwards
> compatibility in real cases.
>
>
> --
> Ethan A Merritt       merritt@u.washington.edu
> Biomolecular Structure Center
> Mailstop 357742
> University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195
>
>