Re: 'with pixels' (was Re: Engines are started; ...)

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

Ethan Merritt wrote:

>On Tuesday 13 July 2004 06:59 am, Petr Mikulik wrote:
>  
>
>>>>Requirement for using specifiers always for plot ... binary would be rather
>>>>cumbersome. Current syntax is OK, e.g.
>>>>	plot 'x.edf' binary with image
>>>>        
>>>>
>>What's the problem with the above simple command? Why to do anything more?
>>    
>>
>
>I thought the binary mode was intended to handle all plot types,
>not just the new "with image".  Or have I got that wrong?
>

You're correct.

>If indeed it is to handle all plot styles, then it suffers from the same
>ambiguities as the non-binary form of plot commands.
>Simplest case:
>	plot 'data' using 0:5 with lines	# y value is found in col 2
>	plot 'data' using 5 with lines  # same y value is now found in col 1
>
>If you omit the using spec, it is ambiguous where to find the y value.
>So I don't see how
>	plot 'data' binary with lines
>is supposed to work unambiguously.
>
>That said, I would be perfectly happy to restrict things so that
>binary mode does not permit an implicit x-val column. 
>

I can go either way on having or not having implicit columns.  If things 
were organized well in the code, and explained well in the 
documentation, defaults might be no problem.  If a table containing the 
default implicit values existed, it could probably be dumped to the 
screen in some fashion to help the user.  But this is all too much of a 
big step right now to ponder a nice set up.

This one example

plot 'x.edf' binary with image

is in fact a special case if the "auto" or "edf" file type is selected because column information will be had from the file itself.  This is a different issue requiring discussion, but it shows the potential to do such things.

Dan