Re: Suggestion to improve usability of plot command

[<br...@ph...>]

Keir Mierle wrote:
> I have a simple suggestion to improve the usability of the plot command.
> Currently, I am not a huge fan of the way point styles are specified; 

Not very surprisingly --- the syntax you use has never actually been 
documented, and has been deprecated for a *long* time now.  The current 
syntax, while still oriented towards numbers, is a lot clearer than

> gnuplot> plot 'file1' with points 4 3
> gnuplot> plot 'file2' with points 1 4

The problem with both your suggestions:

> gnuplot> plot 'file1' with points 'red squares'
> gnuplot> plot 'file2' with points 'blue crosses'
> gnuplot> plot 'file1' with points 'orange octagons'
[...]
> The symbols are:
>         's' : square
>         'o' : circle
>         '^' : triangle up

is the same: they completely ignore one central design principle of 
gnuplot: script compatibility across terminal drivers.  Your proposal
fails to address the question what gnuplot should do with a plot script 
that requests some point symbol the current driver simply can't generate.