Re: errorlines vs errorbars

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

On Tuesday 18 March 2008 07:08, Allin Cottrell wrote:
> Is there any real difference between "errorbars" and "errorlines"?  
> >From the help for errorbars it sounds as if there should be a 
> difference, but I can't see any in the output.
> 
> One feature that would be nice to have -- and that, for a moment, 
> I though "errorlines" might provide -- is the ability to plot a 
> primary series plus y-axis error high and low using just lines 
> (and not vertical bars) for all 3 components.  (This is the most 
> common way of graphing forecasts with error bands in economics.)

This sounds similar to the "between" option of "filledcurves".

> Of course one can achieve this effect manually by providing y, 
> high and low as 3 distinct arguments to 'plot' and forcing the 
> high and low series to use the same line style/type/color.  

In current cvs:

   plot for [i=2:4] 'data' using 1:(column(i)) with lines lc rgb "blue"

where 'data' contains    x ymin y ymax


> But it  
> would be a lot more convenient to be able to provide the same 
> basic input and select the style via errorbars vs 
> errorsomethingelse.
 
I think for quite a while now the philosophy has been that it is
sufficient to provide components from which you can build up a
complicated plot.  For example there is really no advantage of having
a style "linespoints" when you could make the same plot using
"lines" and "points" separately.  

-- 
Ethan A Merritt