Re: special behavior of postscript terminal? (again)

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

On Monday 20 October 2008 16:07:11 Allin Cottrell wrote:
> Five days ago I wrote:
> 
> "With most terminal types, if you specify a color plot then it 
> seems that by default solid lines are used, not dash patterns, for 
> line graphs.  However, the postscript terminal behaves 
> differently: it uses dash patterns by default even when color mode 
> is selected."
> 
> "I think it would be preferable if the post terminal behaved in 
> the same way as the others."
> 
> Are there good reasons for not doing this?  

I know of only one, but it's a core element of the development policy:
being consistent with the way it has worked for the last 20 years.

> If not, would my idea get more attention if I were to submit a patch?

I see two ways to move forward; there may be others:

1) Formulate a more general model in which you can specify dash-pattern
as an independent property at all times.  Most of the code necessary to
support this is already in place
(see http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo_4.3/dashcolor.htm )
but it is not exposed to the user in a friendly fashion.

2) Allow the user to customize the default order of line properties
across all terminals.  I have posted a series of patches to implement
this, patchset #2004590, but haven't received much feedback.  If you
invoke your preferred line style definitions in ~/.gnuplot, then the
"set terminal" options for solid/dash are irrelevant.



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