Suggestions for 5.0: Margin (and Key)

[Philipp K. J. <ja...@ie...>]

All -

Before it is too-too late, I wanted to put 
forward thre small suggestions concerning 
the margins and the key.


1) Naming of margins
The naming of the margin options scatters 
them around in any alphabetical listing of
options. I wonder whether we could add 
alternative names, that put the location 
last (not first) - similar to what is done
in CSS: margin-top, margin-bottom, etc.

This could be done in addition to the current
naming and so preserve backwards compatibility.

Alternatively (and more ambitiously) one could
treat the location of the margin as a sub-option,
like so:
	set margin top 5
and so on. This would (in principle) allow to
combine settings:
	set margin left right 5
but I am not sure how useful that would be.


2) Explicit display of margin value
Is there a way to show the actual margin value,
when the margin is computed automatically? 

Frequently, I find that I would like to adjust
the margin from its automatic value - but in 
order to do so, I have to find the ACTUAL value
first by trial and error. It would be much 
easier if the computed value was displayed, 
for example like so:
	show margin
	lmargin is computed automatically, currently 5
or similar.

(Another use case arises with multiplot, where I
am happy with the margin value chosen by one of
the plots, and now would like to fix both plots
to use that value. Again - currently, I have to
find the actual margin value by trial and error.)


3) Key position and offset
A very similar situation arises with the positioning
of the key. Frequently, I am happy with the automatic
positioning, but would like to adjust it slightly.

I can see two solutions for that: one is that 
	show key
would display the actual position of the margin (so
that this position, when given to "set key at ..."
would reproduce the previous plot), 
OR the introduction of an additional sub-option, 
"offset" to the "key" option, similar to what already
exists for xlabel, ylabel, and so on.


Any thoughts on either of these suggestions? 

Best,

		Ph.