Plotting with variable point size

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Wednesday 08 September 2004 11:00 am, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
> 
> Near the bottom of the discussion on that link, that last graph of 
> language use is an interesting method of displaying data.  (Point size 
> is quantity.)

This feature has been requested several times.
Volker Dobler has even contributed a patchset (#624019)
that implements this by defining a new plot style
	plot 'foo' with sizepoints

I love the idea (it makes nice star charts, for one thing)
but I don't like proliferating plot styles. I would rather add
a keyword to 'plot ... with points'

There is a big problem, however, and it's one that you and I
have both been complaining about already.  The current code has
hardwired assumptions about what quantity is in which column.
Imagine a new keyword "sized"
Then
	splot "starchart" using 1:2:3:4:5 with points sized palette,
              "" using 1:2:3:4 with points sized,
              "" using 1:2:3:4 with points palette    

will have problems because the contents of columns 4 and 5 are not
consistent for the three variants.  Indeed I think this is still
a problem even if we introduce a new plot style "sizepoints".


-- 
Ethan A Merritt       merritt@u.washington.edu
Biomolecular Structure Center
Mailstop 357742
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195