latex/pslatex terminals (was Re: grouping available terminals together)

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

While on the topic if LaTeX related terminals, here's a few comments

1)  I was thinking a nice option would be "complete" or "selfcontained" (too long) or something that not only would put all the LaTeX/PS code in one file but would also encapsulate that code with the few LaTeX commands that would allow the file to be compiled on its own.  Say the idea is to compile the code into EPS format as:

gnuplot foo.gp; latex foo; dvips foo -o foo.ps; ps2eps -f foo.ps

Then just refresh the gv terminal and it is like having the pslatex terminal in a window.  I know it is easy to simply create a short little file to include the gnuplot output, but that creates extra files to keep around when archiving.  (Sure, copy the contents into another file, but that's not convenient for debugging purposes.)


2)  In the documentation are these examples:

 Use gnuplot defaults (mostly sensible, but sometimes not really best):
        set title '\LaTeX\ -- $ \gamma $'
 Force centering both horizontally and vertically:
        set label '{\LaTeX\ -- $ \gamma $}' at 0,0
 Specify own positioning (top here):
        set xlabel '[t]{\LaTeX\ -- $ \gamma $}'
 The other label -- account for long ticlabels:
        set ylabel '[r]{\LaTeX\ -- $ \gamma $\rule{7mm}{0pt}}'

However, my experience is that to get a backslash into the LaTeX code requires \\, not just \.  So the above should probably be

 Use gnuplot defaults (mostly sensible, but sometimes not really best):
        set title '\\LaTeX\\ -- $ \\gamma $'
 Force centering both horizontally and vertically:
        set label '{\\LaTeX\\ -- $ \\gamma $}' at 0,0
 Specify own positioning (top here):
        set xlabel '[t]{\\LaTeX\\ -- $ \\gamma $}'
 The other label -- account for long ticlabels:
        set ylabel '[r]{\\LaTeX\\ -- $ \\gamma $\\rule{7mm}{0pt}}'

Am I overlooking a backslash behavior switch somewhere?  The "most sensible, but sometimes not really best" comment above leaves one wondering "Why?".  Of course, there is always the possibility of defining ones own words outside gnuplot, like "\mytext1", "\eq1", that sort of thing.  But I'm not sure why the original author put that comment there.  (Not arguing against, just wondering what was meant.)

3)  Is the

font '<font>,#'

terminal independent?  At least in terms of size.  I mean, it would be nice if there were a way of translating

font ',16'

so that the pslatex terminal places an approximate "\\large" in the text.  For example, say I want

set title "Here is a title" font ",16"

which creates a bigger title in x11, but not in pslatex.  If I do the following:

set title "\\large Here is a title"

then that "\\large " shows up in other terminals that aren't LaTeX.  Any objection if I write such a patch some day?  Or might there be a reason for a more broader use of the word "size".  We've got "pointsize", maybe "titlesize", "linesize".  Thoughts?


Dan