Re: dashes again

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

> > I raise questions about dash line patters from time to time (see e.g.
> > messages "unified dashes"). Usually it happens when I try to do
> > 	set term x11 dash
> > 	plot x,-x,1,2,3
> > and it comes out solid :-)
> > 
> > 1. It did not work in the morning, I had to find an older e-mail and
> >    find there
> >          xrdb -merge < Gnuplot.app-defaults
> > 
> > 1a. That seems to be a problem for ordinary users, because
> >    file  Gnuplot.app-defaults  is not "make install"ed.
> 
> Yes it is.  There is some dispute, however, about whether there is a
> standard place to install it. To resolve this, Christoph Junghans
> added an explicit configuration option.  It is noted in the Changelog
> as:
>  
> 2010-02-07  Christoph Junghans (ottxor)
>         * configure.in share/Makefile.am src/Makefile.am src/gplt_x11.c
>         src/variable.c: Configurable X11 application resource path.
>         Bug #2931287 #219323

After usual "make install" it is not installed anywhere. I would expect it 
in a gnuplot's directory such as share/gnuplot/4.5/x11

> > 1b. Further, gnuplot-x11 does not detect automatically that it cannot
> >    draw dash lines because that xrdb command was not executed. Why it
> >    does not help? 
> 
> Correction:  There is no requirement to run xrdb.  xrdb is one 
> particular way you can modify the current X resource values from the
> command line, but it is not the only way, not even the usual way.

In "help x11", solid|dashed is described. It does not say that something 
is needed to be installed in order this works. That's confusing.

> >    It should write a warning when "gnuplot -dashed" or 
> >    "set term x11 dash".
> 
> Gnuplot_x11 is not even running yet at the time you enter either of
> these commands.  It is started up later, at the time of the first plot.

But it gets the "-dashed" parameter. I think it should produce a warning 
that this is ignored because something is not set.

> > 2. "dash" support was added into wxt terminal in June 2009, just after
> >    4.4 branch separation. Shouldn't this be (back)ported to 4.4?
> 
> It is on my list of patches to apply after 4.4.0 is released.
> I posted the full list the other day, but here it is again:
>    winmain_va_copy      Allows building with Visual C
>    wxt_dashed           set term wxt ... {dashed|solid} {dashlength <dl>}
>    x11_mousewheel
>    wxt_mousewheel
>    pow_overflow         if i**j would cause integer overflow, return a float instead
>    int_overflow         Check internal integer multiplications for overflow
>    tikz                 remove conditional tests for version 4.3
>    candle_width         optional 6th column containing box width
>    rmargin              tweak left and right margins to be more like those prior to 4.2.4
>    jw-refactor          clean up the execute-from-string operations lf_push/lf_pop
>    cc-for-build         fix for building documentation during cross-compilation
>    percent_s            support the "%s" format specifier in strftime()
>    Kalinin_metapost     Fix inheritance of line thickness by text strings
>    suppress_PDFMark     rearrange postscript prolog to allow customization
>    timefmt              handle evaluated input values for time format "%s"
>    init_func_points     initialize full coordinate structure for 2D functions
> 
> These are all non-trivial changes that were made subsequent to the code 
> freeze for 4.4.0 (by "non-trivial" I mean "I was afraid they might possibly
> break something).  During the -rc1 period I've only been applying bug fixes
> and "trivial" changes to things like documentation.

OK

> > 3. Windows terminal supports solid, dash, dot-dash patterns via
> >    its menu in the graph window, but it does not support
> >       set term windows {solid|dashed}
> >    Benjamin, can you please implement it?
> > 
> > 4. Should "all usual" terminals support both options
> >       {solid|dash} {dashlength <dl>}  ?
> >    Currently:
> >      x11, svg: {solid|dash}
> >      wxt, postscript: {dashed|solid} {dashlength <dl>}
> >      png, pdf: {dashlength <dl>}
> 
> Not sure I understand your proposal.  Which terminals should be changed?

I wonder why some terminals support "dashlength" but not "solid|dash". 
That seems confusing. Should not all the dash-capable terminals support both 
options?

> >       set termoption {solid|dashed}
> 
> That would be tricky for postscript or pdf output if the file already
> is open, since the setting is currently done in the file header.
> But maybe it is possible.

Yes, it is possible to add
  /Solid false def
in the beginning of the plot, e.g. after
  /Helvetica findfont 140 scalefont setfont

---
PM