Re: wxWidgets terminal : XPM cursors and icons

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

On Wednesday 07 June 2006 12:01 am, you wrote:
> >   
> Let's discuss on a practical case, and on a specific aspect of the 
> problem : the fonts scaling (the aspect ratio behaviour is related, if I 
> give up on fonts, I will give up on the aspect ratio immediately).
> I loaded multiplt.dem on both wxt and x11 with their default sizes which 
> are in the order of 600x400, and then resized both windows to make them 
> smaller.
> Attached is the final screenshot. I honestly prefer the wxt output, even 
> if none of them are really readable.

But you are focusing on the size (big/small) rather than the aspect
ratio.  Most of the time if I want to resize a window it is to spread out
the plot either horizontally or vertically.  The whole point  of
the exercise is to change the aspect ratio.  Making it bigger or smaller
is just a side effect.  I really don't care much about the fonts in
such a case.

Example:
The 4th plot of 'histograms.dem' works much better if the
plot is taller than it is wide.  If I step through the demo in x11
I can just drag the bottom edge of the window down and it spreads
itself out nicely.  Dragging the bottom edge of the wxt window
down accomplishes exactly nothing, at least not without a subseqent
replot command.

The more common case for me is examining plots of a time-series.
I have standard scripts, but the length of time covered by the data
can vary. I load the script and a plot pops up; if it corresponds
to a long run, then I immediately want to stretch it in the horizontal
in order to separate closely space features in the plot. This works
quite naturally (to me) in x11, but again accomplishes nothing in the
wxt terminal unless I explicitly replot after stretching the window.  

My thinking is that if the user changes the size/shape of the window,
it is because he wants the plot to be that size/shape.  Making the
pure horizontal or pure vertical stretch operations be effectively
no-ops seems a strange choice.

-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle 98195-7742