Re: grouping available terminals together

[<HBB...@t-...>]

Ethan A Merritt wrote:
> On Thursday 08 February 2007 23:53, Timothée Lecomte wrote:
>> Maybe we should change the terminal API to:
>> * rgb colors
>> * dash patterns
>>
>> and the default linetypes would be handled by the core.
>> On a screen terminal:
>> -lt 1 would be red
>> -lt 2 would be blue
>> ...
>> On a print-oriented terminal:
>> -lt 1 would be red/solid
>> -lt 2 would be blue/dash
> 
> Isn't that exactly what we have now?
> 
> I am speculating, since the decision must date back to 
> the origins of gnuplot. 

Absolutely.  In a nutshell, since no two terminals agree 100% on what 
kinds of line they can draw, our founders decided on the sanest possible 
approach: the least common denominator.  Which is that on any remotely 
suitable output medium, there will be some way to draw at least a couple 
different types of lines, and that's *all* that can be said about them. 
  We can't generally prescribe they must differ in colour, width, 
pattern or whatever.  All we know is that the set of possible choice 
will be countable, so count them is what we do.  Which brought us the 
concept of a linetype number.

People seem to forget this, but the original promise in gnuplot has 
always been total cross-terminal script compatibility (setting aside 
only the 'set terminal' command itself), i.e. every script would produce 
useful output on every terminal, within reasonable boundaries.  In 
particular, that means no termination of scripts because terminal X 
doesn't support feature Y.