Re: grouping available terminals together

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

On Thursday 08 February 2007 22:40, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
> 
> > "blue" we've got.
> > "stars"? So few terminals could support it that there seems no point.
> > "dashdot"? Ditto. 
> 
> I meant being able to specify the symbol by a name rather than number.

So put the definitions in your .gnuplot file.

plus  = 1
times = 2
stars  = 3
square = 4
solid_square = 5
circle = 6
solid_circle = 7

Then you can say
	plot <foo> with points pt stars lc rgb "blue",
             <baz> with points pt solid_circle lc rgb "cyan"

One thing we might consider, however, is whether it is safe
to allow a shorthand form
	set style data points    # this works
	plot <foo> pt stars      # but this isn't currently accepted

I'd have to think about whether that shorthand syntax is unambiguous.


Another possibility that works right now is this:

# defined in .gnuplot
set style line 101 pointtype 3 lc rgb "blue"
blue_stars = 101

	set style data points
	plot <foo> ls blue_stars



> dash-dot is rare?  

Maybe my impression is biased because I mostly use the wxt and png terminals.
Yeah there are a bunch of legacy drivers that support dash patterns
(tpic gpr), but I never use them.  That leaves - what? - the postscript
variants and the metafile variants.

Which is fine, don't get me wrong.  The interactive terminals and the
screen terminals are much better off with color than dot/dash.  It's really
only needed for the print-oriented terminals, particularly PostScript.

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