Re: x11: slow drawing after set xtics font

[Petr M. <mi...@ph...>]

> '*' as a font name is a disadvantageous choice: the font selection
> mechanism of the x-server searches through all the fonts to find
> one which matches the name (there is a speed difference between
> specifying '*' and the name of a non existent font) and has the
> selected font size - in the normal x-server installation first the
> bitmapped fonts are searched then the scalable.

If the drawing gets so slow, it seems that the server searches the font list 
for each tic for font "*", right? Cannot this be eliminated?

I think that Octave should produce gnuplot code like:

set terminal x11 font "arial"
set title "Hello world" font ",12"

instead of

set terminal x11
set title "Hello world" font "*,12"


> you can see this by specifying different font sizes: different
> fonts (sometimes even none) are selected.
> 
> to make the plot fast select the name of a font which exists.
> 
> 
> Petr Mikulik wrote:
> > 
> > Gnuplot x11 drawings in Octave 3.2 appear displayed much slower than it is 
> > usual. This slow-down can be reproduced in gnuplot by e.g.:
> > 
> > 
> > set terminal x11 close
> > test
> > 
> > set terminal x11 close
> > set title "Hello world" font "*,12" # no effect to speed
> > set xtics font "*,12"	# makes slow drawing
> > 
> > plot sin(x)/x
> > 
> > 
> > This slow-down is caused by
> > 	set xtics font "*,12" 
> > while the font specification in "set title" does not slow gnuplot down.
> > 
> > Note that using "set terminal wxt" does change its speed after the font 
> > command.
> > 
> > What can be the reason? Could the speed be improved?
> > The delay of replotting is rather boring when working with Octave on a 
> > laptop running on battery :-(
> > 
> > ---
> > PM