Re: linetype vs linestyle mess

[Ralf J. <jue...@cs...>]

On Fri, 7 Mar 2008, Ethan Merritt wrote:

> It's almost at that point now.  I use it that way already.
> In the cvs version (but not I think in 4.2) the line style
> defaults to the linetype of the same number, so mostly it
> "just works". The are 2 tricky points:
>
> 1) As you noted, the line styles themselves are defined in terms
>   of linetype.  So we have a bit of a circularity problem :-)

Where do you see a circularity? In the scheme I sketched
"linetype" refers to the line pattern, which is orthogonal
to all other aspects of line appearance. A command like

   set style line 1 linetype 3

would mean you change the line pattern of line style 1
to 3 but don't change any other property of line style 1.

Ralf




>
> 2) color assignments for contours don't work. It's the same
>   problem as with the hidden surface colors, but much worse.
>
> There may be a few other corner cases. Mostly it would just
> need a lot of testing.  After settling the 2 issues above we
> could switch it over in CVS and let people gradually flush
> out any problems.
>
>
>> Instead, the plot command would cycle through line
>> styles. There would be a set of pre-defined default
>> line styles, the definitions you get now with
>>
>>     set style line <n> default
>>
>> for n=1..1000, or something like that.
>> For backwards compatibility 'lt x' in a plot command
>> would be interpreted as 'ls x'. There is no need for
>>     set style increment user
>>
>> it can be declared deprecated (for backwards
>> compatibility it would be a command without effect).
>> Linetypes would be used in defining line styles only,
>>
>>     set style line 1 lt 5 lw 2 lc rgb "green"
>>
>> Ralf
>>
>>
>
> -- 
> Ethan A Merritt            Courier Deliveries: 1959 NE Pacific
> Dept of Biochemistry
> Health Sciences Building
> University of Washington - Seattle WA 98195-7742
>