Re: with pointcolor

[Ethan A M. <me...@uw...>]

On Thursday, 29 October 2020 13:26:38 PDT Dima Kogan wrote:
> Hi. I just discovered that there's no "pointcolor" property. So this
> doesn't work:
> 
>   plot x with points pt 6 ps 2 pointcolor "red"
> 
> The "right" way to do it is this:
> 
>   plot x with points pt 6 ps 2 linecolor "red"
> 
> Which is really surprising. And it means that when plotting with
> "linespoints" we can't use separate colors for the line and for the
> points. I'm not convinced that we do want to make separate line/point
> colors possible, but can "pointcolor" at the very least become an alias
> for "linecolor"?

There is nothing special about points.

Plot elements are drawn using the current pen, and the keyword
for specifying the color of the current pen is "linecolor".
Actually, prior to version 4.something the only options were
"linetype n" or "linestyle n".  The "linecolor" keyword was
added as a generic ad hoc specification that didn't require
pre-defined a linetype or linestyle.  I suppose it could have
been "pencolor" or "currentcolor" or even just "color", but
what we have is "linecolor".

So  plot ... with boxes linecolor "blue"    # not 'boxcolor'
    plot ... with impulses linecolor "blue" # not 'impulsecolor'
    plot ... with fsteps linecolor "blue"   # not "stepcolor'
    plot ... with points linecolor "blue"   # not 'pointcolor'


	Ethan


> 
> Is there some historical reason for this?
> 
> Thanks!
> dima