Re: [Gnuplot-info] set palette maxcolors different behavior in 5.0?

[Patrick A. <pat...@Co...>]

> There was a change in handling "maxcolors", but the change came several
> years ago.  It is not connected to version 4 / version 5.
> I think the new behavior was first introduced in 4.4.3 (Mar 2011) and
> tweaked a bit in later versions.
>
> The change is that terminals with full RGB color support will always
> give you any explicitly requested color.  That is, "maxcolors" will
> determine how many subdivisions are made for an interpolated palette,
> e.g.
>      set palette defined (0 "red", 1 "blue") maxcolors 5
>      test palette
> But if you request, say, 20 explicit color ranges you will get all
> of them even though you said "maxcolors 5"

I don't understand the purpose of maxcolors then. As a user I want the 
ability to switch between a continuous or discrete palette, and I 
shouldn't need to condense my 256 color palette down to 8 colors myself 
in order to achieve this. It seems to me that should be the purpose of 
the maxcolors feature.

Since I manage to get my desired result in the 'x11' terminal I will 
continue using that. But it sounds like when I try to print to png or 
pdf, I may end up with a different plot.

Could I request that the maxcolors be changed to automatically define 
discrete color levels even if more colors are provided in the palette?