Re: [Gnuplot-info] "set key noautotitle" ignored on explicit column name?

[Rhys U. <rhy...@gm...>]

Hi Ethan,

Thanks for taking a look and the time to respond.

> Because in the 4th plots you tell it to read the columnheader
> (in order to find column "x") and so the input data must necessarily
> _have_ columnheaders.  That is the same thing that
> you are telling it with "set key autotitle columnheader".
> Same request - same result.
>
> Therefore plot #4 shows the intended behaviour.

I have a use case where that behavior becomes a decided usability hiccup.

set key autotitle
plot 'foo.dat' using 0:"x", 'bar.dat' using 0:"x"

Now I have two autotitled legend entries that uselessly both say "x".
I can't tell them apart.  The file name is the only distinguishing
feature and using "x" suppresses the filenames' appearance.  I
implicitly didn't ask for column headers because I omitted
"columnheader" when turning on autotitling.  I can't turn this
behavior off because there's no "set key autotitle nocolumnheader".

The usability hiccup becomes worse as the number of files involved and
number of columns increase.  I'm somewhere in the 30+ files and 200+
column range on a daily basis.

> If your column header were "3rd_base" or something
> like that, plot commands #1 would produce an incorrect plot
> with a spurious initial data point at 3.

I personally make my column headers to be valid C identifiers (so
"third_base" not "3rd_base") deliberately so that skipping the first
invalid line is makes "using 0:1" perfectly well-behaved.

> Plot #2 is arguably a demonstration that we should have two
> distinct commands that don't really exist yet:
>    set noautotitle columnheader
>   set autotitle nocolumnheader

How about just the current three with the middle one amended to fix
the usability hiccup I described?

set key noautotitle: no autotitles, period
set key autotitle: autotitles from plot specifier without magical
columnheader behavior that wasn't requested
set key autotitle columnheader: autotitles with magical columnheaders

Otherwise you'll have to explain that
    set key noautotitle nocolumnheader
doesn't really mean
    set key autotitle columnheader
on account of the double negative.

All that said, hell of a tool.  Thank you for the effort you put into it.

- Rhys