Re: change handling of time data for 5.0?

[Karl R. <ra...@un...>]

On 04.10.2014 02:17, Ethan A Merritt wrote:
> On Friday, 03 October, 2014 15:04:07 Karl Ratzsch wrote:
>> Would it be difficult to make the second parameter to timecolumn()
>> optional, and use whatever is set via "set timefmt" if no format
>> string is given?
> 
> Yes, it is possible to trap the case of a single parameter and
> fall back to a default timefmt. That loses the ability to have
> separate default formats for the x and y axes, but see below.
> 
> The whole idea of having the time format be per-axis rather than
> per-datafile makes little sense to me. So I'm now thinking we could
> remove the timefmt field from (struct axis) and have one global default.
> This is in fact what the 4.6 documentation describes, even though
> it hasn't been true for a very long time. So although it would
> internally be a change, it would keep the previous documentated 
> behavior. It would only affect scripts that used the undocumented 
> command: set timefmt y "format".

Even that can be kept, imo. timecolumn() could check for a format
string as (in that order) second parameter, in timefmt <colnum>
(new), timefmt <x/y), general timefmt, and use the first it finds set.

  Karl


-- 
Karl-Friedrich Ratzsch (Dipl. Chem.)
Freiburger Materialforschungszentrum, Universität Freiburg
Stefan-Meier-Straße 21, 79104 Freiburg i. Br.
Tel.: 0761/203-4748 Fax: -4701