Re: default & double terminal options

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

On Monday 21 August 2006 02:17 pm, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> 1.)
> is there a way to get the default terminal settings? Postscript
> terminal provides an option "default", but most terminals don't

There is no coherent philosophy at present.
Several people have proposed that during the next round of
development (after 4.2) we modify all terminal drivers to have
"set term <foo> default" option.   It sounds reasonable to me.

If you want to get a head start, go ahead and start putting together
a patch that will convert your favorite terminals over to the new
system.

	Ethan



> (metapost terminal sets everything back to default values without
> asking for it which is probably against the main phylosophy of how
> terminals should work, but that's another topic which I don't intend
> to discuss here).
>
> I would like to write a longer gnuplot script with multiple changes of
> terminal type and output file. The input will be provided from outside
> (from other users, so I can't assume anything about it in advance).
>
> The most safe way would be to write a single script for each input
> (which is what is done now), but that influences efficiency
> considerably (think of calling gnuplot 30 times versus calling gnuplot
> only once with 30 plot commands and perhaps a few changes of the
> terminal and output file inbetween).
>
> Example:
> the user selects PNG terminal and wants the first figure to be
> transparent and the second one to use "default" values (whatever they
> are, notransparent in that case).
>
> first plot:
> ********
> terminal: png
> additional options: transparent
> script: plot sin(x)
>
> second plot:
> ********
> terminal: png
> additional options: -
> script: plot sin(x)
>
> The first approach would be to write two scripts, while the "efficient
> one" would be to do something like this:
>
> set term png transparent
> set output 'p001.png'
> set title 'first plot'
> plot sin(x)
> reset
> # how to get the default terminal settings again?
> set term png
> set output 'p002.png'
> plot sin(x)
>
> "reset" is very handy, but I'm looking for a similar thing for
> terminal settings as well.
>
>
> In the worst case I can still warn the user that it's his own fault if
> he wants to do such obscure things and that it's his own
> responsibility to set the things back as they were. Or I can leave the
> inefficient version there, but I would be very happy if there was some
> "magic reset switch" for terminal settings as well. (There's only one
> thing I'm sure about: I don't want to parse options in that program to
> set them back to defaults.)
>
>
> 2.)
> What is the main phylosophy behind terminals. Is a sentence like
>     set terminal post color monochrome
> allowed? Well, the above is not, but for example
>     set term png notransparent transparent
> doesn't complain. I prefer the later, since I don't have to worry then
> if I set some settings which I consider to be default for my purpose
> (for example "set term post color") and simply append user-provided
> ones to the end of the string (if user wants portrait, the command
> would become "set term post color portrait", if the user wants
> monochrome, the command would become "set term post color monochrome",
> but that doesn't work).
>
> OK, I know, I can do it in two steps. I can first apply my own
> defaults and then user-provided ones (wouldn't work with metapost, but
> then again: I don't care about metapost terminal too much).
>
> There are some work-arounds, but life would be much easier if
> behaviour would be more consistent accross terminals. (I see no reason
> why someone would make a restriction that an option may not be
> specified more than once.)
>
> Thank you very much for any answer,
>     Mojca
>
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-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle 98195-7742