Re: grouping available terminals together

[<tim...@en...>]

Hans-Bernhard Bröker wrote:
> 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.
And it was the right decision at that time.

But do we want gnuplot to stay at what was the least-common denominator 
20 years ago ? How many people use gnuplot right now for pen plotters ?
And since we provide rgb colors, why not doing the same with other kind 
of "modern" features ?

>  
>   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.
>   
Note that the concept of linetype number looks very useful to me to 
provide sensible default styles.

Timothée