Re: [Gnuplot-bugs] splot binary specification incorrect

[Hans-Bernhard B. <br...@ph...>]

Zack Sullivan wrote:

> will load a binary file of the format:
> <N+1> y0  y1 ...  yN
>  x0  z00 z01 ... z0N
>  x1  z10 z11 ... z1N etc.
> 
> This is not correct.  The actual format appears to be:
> 
> <N>  x0  x1 ...  xN
> y0  z00 z01 ... z0N
> y1  z10 z11 ... z1N etc.

> i.e. a) you should specify that the lines have N z-components, rather 
> than being N+1 single-precision numbers long. 

No. They do have N+1 z-components, thanks to being zero-indexed.

 > b) the x and y axes are swapped vs. the specification.

You appear to be correct on this count, though.  And it's been like that 
for at least 11.5 years now (I've traced it back all the way to version 
3.5 of Sep 1993).   Amazing that nobody noticed this any earlier.  This 
does explain one of the old mysteries of gnuplot, though: why files in 
'binary' mode consistently seemed to get their hidden3d displays 
backside up.

As to which way round to fix this, I'm not quite sure.  The problem is 
that it's hard to know how many people already found out about this 
discrepancy and hardwired the actual behaviour into code of their own.
I guess patching the docs to match reality would be easier on everybody.