Re: smooth shading & terminal specialities

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

>   if (gppsfile)
> 	draw_inside_color_smooth_box_postscript(out);
>   else
> 	draw_inside_color_smooth_box_bitmap(out);
>
> I need my own version of drawing "smooth_box" (the terminal supports
> vector graphic format, so drawing a whole lot of rectangles of single
> color is extremely inefficient). Should I say

Use "plot .. with image" instead.

> draw_inside_color_smooth_box_postscript could be rewritten as well to
> produce smooth shading instead of 1000 single-color boxes (smooth
> liear shading with a stitching function).

this routine must respect "set palette maxcolors"; your proposal means 
adding a code just for the case maxcolors == 0.

> Many plot on http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo_4.1/pm3d.html could
> be drawn more efficiently if I knew in advance that I'm able to draw
> an NxM image

I think you request that "with image" should support also functions and not 
only datafile as it currently does, e.g.
 	(s)plot x*x-y*y with image


Notice that "with pm3d" is optimized for non-matricial data; e.g., the 
following masked function would have troubles "with image":
 	set pm3d map
 	f(x,y)=(x*x+y*y>5) ? x*y : 1/0
 	splot f(x,y)

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PM