Re: fill pattern

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

Ethan Merritt wrote:
> On Friday 25 August 2006 04:04 pm, Dhiman Barman wrote:
> 
>>  Two items with legends w and m have the same fill pattern. The plot
>>is at http://www.caida.org/~dhiman/c.eps
>>
>>  What could be the reason ? Is it a feature or bug ?
> 
> 
> There are only 8 patterns.  Successive plots cycle through them.

First, 8 is rather low, but hey, how many patterns can there be, right?  So, a combination of patterns and colors should cover enough I would think.  (And there might even be an argument for not having so many patterns because if the box is small, it is kind of difficult to tell exactly what the pattern is.)

However, if one looks at the example

	http://www.caida.org/~dhiman/c.eps

you'll see that the w/m (second 'm' of 'm s i g') confusion is a result of the pattern being blank, i.e., no pattern.  The problem with that even though the color may be modulating with the pattern "blank" has no color to modulate.

I'd say "blank" should not be a pattern.  Could it instead by a pattern of dots or circles?  (Dots would give more variety and be distinguishable from lines, even for small boxes.)

Dan

PS:  Another question about this example:  Why does the fourth column from the right not reach as high as the rest?