Re: Proposal: Saving graphs from Qt and wxt terminals

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

[snip]

> This need arises because the current output of , say the png
> terminal, looks very different from the interactive version of graph.
> I long since gave up trying to tune the two to be sufficiently
> similar and use the clipboard function.

That was actually not the reason for my suggestion
at all. I am not trying to solve the problem that
graphs made by the gd-lib png terminal look different
from the ones made by the wxt terminal.

My motivation is "ease of use", in a GUI-spirit:
click the "save" button, and gnuplot does what
every other GUI application does when you hit 
the "save" button. Namely, offer a file dialog,
and save to file.

> 
> One quick way to do this, which could be a first step without all the 
> dialogues would be to add a termopt :
> eg.
> termopt saveDir="/tmp/gnuplot" saveFormat="png"

Yes, I agree, I have toyed with the idea of adding
a command, let's call it "export" (to distinguish it
from "save", which saves commands) that would accept
a terminal type and a filename as arguments and do
all of the required steps (including reinstating the
interactive terminal to its previous settings), like so:

export "graph.png" pngcairo 

One could even supply addtl options, and pass them on
to the selected terminal. As you said, I'd be capable
of putting that together, and maybe I will (one day).

[snip]

> 
> This would be most useful to me. I don't want to have to go through a 
> metric tonne of option dialogues like gimp does or do battle with the 
> standard file dialogues that require a lot of clicking if you want to
> go anywhere other "my documents".

Keep in mind that I am not necessarily thinking of
the power-user in power-mode. I am thinking of the
occasional user, or a power-user who "just wants to
save this graph". Different use case, equally valid.

> 
> What would be nice in gnuplot is a one line configuration command 
> entered from a console that allows a one click save afterwards. A
> simple text entry for file name is all that is needed. Default to
> last used name to overwrite or change.

[snip]
 
> If I had to do something like one console command :
> termopt saveDir="/tmp/gnuplot" saveFormat="png" saveFile="test.png"
> 
> then a single click interaction on the interactive terminal this
> would be significant  time saver for me and would provide a
> satisfactory minimalistic  solution.

That's still a two-step process. Why not roll it all into
one? 

In any case, I think having such functionality would be
goodness. Nevertheless, I think it would make sense to
also have a proper, GUI-style way of saving a graph - 
in particular since we are already 3/4 of the way there
(with the clipboard feature).