Re: [Gnuplot-info] minor ticks on logaritmic axis

[BBands <bb...@gm...>]

In coding our own stock-market analysis graphics program we stumbled
across this mine field. We chose to give the user three options: log
tics, linear tics and decades. 'Log tics' produces equidistnat tics on
the chosen axis, 'linear grid' produces tics every n points apart and
'decades' is the gnuplot and perhaps conventional default. Explaining
this to users is hell. We just say, "Try all three and use the one you
like best."

Thinking about this makes my head hurt,

    John


On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Ethan Merritt <eam...@gm...> wrote:
> The issue of minor tics on a log scale axis has been problematic since the
> origin of gnuplot, lost in the dim mists of time.  The oldest bug in the
> tracker complains about this.  But over the last 10 years I have never seen
> a coherent proposal about how the program could better handle a "set mxtics"
> command in log-scale mode, let alone a patch that would implement it.
>
> IMHO the best thing is to treat "set/unset mxtics" in log scale mode as an
> on/off operation only.  "on" means you get autogenerated minor tics, "off"
> means you don't get any.
>
> As John points out, you can generally set mxtics to 10.  That fixes some odd
> corner cases when the total range on x is less than one decade, but can
> introduce strangeness in other corner cases.