Re: Suggestions for 5.0: Margin (and Key)

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

On Wed, 18 Jun 2014 15:53:01 -0700
Ethan A Merritt <sf...@us...> wrote:

> On Wednesday, 18 June, 2014 15:40:11 Philipp K. Janert wrote:
> > On Wed, 18 Jun 2014 15:31:46 -0700
> > Ethan A Merritt <sf...@us...> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Wednesday, 18 June, 2014 15:03:32 Philipp K. Janert wrote:
> > > 
> > > > > > 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), 
> > > > > 
> > > > > See above.  These values can be retrieved from the GPVAL
> > > > > variables.
> > > > 
> > > > What variables hold the key position? When I
> > > > do "show variables all", nothing seems appropriate.
> > > 
> > > I meant that you can position the key box relative to the plot
> > > border by using, e.g.
> > > 
> > >   set key top right at graph 0.98, graph 0.98
> > 
> > But that's not what I mean! I know that I can place
> > the key arbitrarily - IFF I know, in absolute terms,
> > where I want it!
> > 
> > My use case is this: I want to use the automatically 
> > chosen position as starting point, and then modify it.
> > This could be done through an "offset" directive in
> > "set key", but it could also be done if I could read
> > out the currently chosen key position from some 
> > automatically set GPVAL variable. But none of the
> > GPVAL vars seems to refer to the current key position.
> > 
> > Or am I missing something?
> 
> I think you are correct that it could only be done by adding a
> new parameter equivalent to "offset".   The default positioning
> uses an empirical try/oops/try-again approach that is basically
> impossible to document usefully.   Note that the empirical positioning
> can easily come out differently on different terminals, so even if
> we were to add a tweak parameter you'd have to tweak all over
> again if you changed the output device.

Yes, I understand that.

Would it be possible to add two GPVAL vars to hold
the actual (screen?) positions of the x and y coords
of the key?

> 
> 	Ethan