Re: grouping available terminals together

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

On Sunday 11 February 2007 15:22, you wrote:
> I just don't understand why there seems to be some sort of opposition
> for the same thing with dash patterns...

Opposition?  I thought it was more a case of nothing to work with.

How many terminal types are capable of defining dash patterns at all?
So far as I know, the list is basically emf, post, pdf, and x11.
And LaTeX, I suppose, but the usable TeX terminal variants are piggy-backing
on postscript.  

post and pdf already use the same dash patterns.

emf uses a completely different approach:
	for (i=0; i<ndashpatterns; i++)
	for (j=0; j<ncolors; j++)
		use color j and dashpattern i;

There are patches floating around that use a scheme similar to emf
for postscript as well (e.g.  http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/~yamaga/gnuplot/)
so I guess there at least some users who prefer it.

Dashes for screen terminals are pretty useless, but you can define the
ones for x11 however you like.

So I guess I am puzzled as to exactly what you are asking for.
Is it just a decision about whether the emf terminal should be changed
to mimic the post/pdf terminals?  Are you concerned that other screen-based
terminals do not support dashes? (I see no reason that they should, but if
someone wants to add it, I guess it wouldn't hurt any).



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