Re: grouping available terminals together

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

On Monday 12 February 2007 12:39, Hans-Bernhard Br=F6ker wrote:
> Ethan A Merritt wrote:
>=20
> > Back to the topic of allowing color in LaTeX plots.  It seems perfectly
> > reasonable to me. =20
>=20
> Unfortunately, Donald E. Knuth disagrees with that view.  TeX doesn't do=
=20
> colour, period.

But LaTeX does, it seems.
This is a LaTeX driver, right? not a TeX-with-nothing-else driver.
I'm a LaTeX novice, and may be missing something obvious, but adding
color "just works" for me here using teTeX.
=20
> Yes, some extensions of TeX using \special commands put into the DVI=20
> output file, do; as do variants of TeX such as pdftex.  But those are=20
> not TeX.

Here is a simple test.tex file produced by gnuplot with color enabled

% GNUPLOT: LaTeX picture
\setlength{\unitlength}{0.240900pt}
\ifx\plotpoint\undefined\newsavebox{\plotpoint}\fi
\sbox{\plotpoint}{\rule[-0.200pt]{0.400pt}{0.400pt}}%
\color[rgb]{0.00,0.00,0.00}
\begin{picture}(1500,900)(0,0)
\sbox{\plotpoint}{\rule[-0.200pt]{0.400pt}{0.400pt}}%
\color[rgb]{0.00,0.00,0.00}
\put(60.0,40.0){\rule[-0.200pt]{0.400pt}{177.543pt}}
\put(60.0,40.0){\rule[-0.200pt]{337.019pt}{0.400pt}}
\put(1459.0,40.0){\rule[-0.200pt]{0.400pt}{177.543pt}}
\color[rgb]{0.00,0.00,1.00}
\put(759,839){\makebox(0,0){TeX color test - title in blue, plot in red}}
\put(60.0,777.0){\rule[-0.200pt]{337.019pt}{0.400pt}}
\color[rgb]{1.00,0.00,0.00}
\put(60,40){\makebox(0,0){$+$}}
\put(526,286){\makebox(0,0){$+$}}
\put(993,531){\makebox(0,0){$+$}}
\put(1459,777){\makebox(0,0){$+$}}
\color[rgb]{0.00,0.00,0.00}
\put(60.0,40.0){\rule[-0.200pt]{0.400pt}{177.543pt}}
\put(60.0,40.0){\rule[-0.200pt]{337.019pt}{0.400pt}}
\put(1459.0,40.0){\rule[-0.200pt]{0.400pt}{177.543pt}}
\put(60.0,777.0){\rule[-0.200pt]{337.019pt}{0.400pt}}
\color[rgb]{0.00,0.00,0.00}
\end{picture}

And here is my test LaTeX document:
  \documentclass{article}
  \usepackage{color}
  \begin{document}
  \input{test}
  \end{document}

I see nothing marked \special

> I'm pointing out that the whole reason for 'set term latex' to=20
> exist, given the much more feature-rich alternatives available, is that=20
> its output has a quality that none of the others can offer: it works=20
> with *every* valid TeX implementation, no matter how old, no matter how=20
> strange.  The price for this feature is that the capabilities are rather=
=20
> severely limited.  If we break this feature, there'll be no point left=20
> to use latex.trm instead of epslatex.trm.  In that case latex.trm would=20
> have become pointless.

It may well be that there is already no point in using latex.trm;
that was my other question :-)

Why this vehemence against color?  The same driver (latex.trm)
already emits emtex specials if asked.  Those was *are* marked
\special, and in fact I can't get the resulting file to do anything
reasonable when fed to teTeX.  Why is that OK but not color?

=2D-=20
Ethan A Merritt                                 Courier Deliveries: 1959 NE=
 Pacific
Dept of Biochemistry    M/S 357742
Health Sciences Building
University of Washington - Seattle