Re: New patch allows 2d plots to use PM3D palette colors - please test

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

Petr Mikulik wrote:

>>I've been wondering about plot background colors, too.  I often see
>>plots with slightly off-white backgrounds.  There is the X11 background
>>color, but nothing for controlling background color for, say, png or
>>PostScript.  I know it has little to do with the "scientific" leanings
>>of gnuplot.  It would require something like "set background" (whole
>>area including axes and labels), "set plotground" (area only inside the
>>axes).  This might then require some color such as "none" or "clear",
>>which have obvious meanings in terminals like PostScript.
>>    
>>
>
>Yet another background is that of the graph (easy for 2D and 'view map',
>more intriguing for 3D), and for the key.
>
>What about some new syntax for that?
>
>set key ... background rgb "gray10"
>set border ... background rgb "gray10"
>set size ... background rgb "cyan"
>
>or
>
>set style background {key | border | graph | paper} .... ?
>
>  
>

(I was out of town for a bit...)  Either of these would be fine.  Or 
does your "or" mean both methods should be implemented?

This doesn't seem like a difficult thing to add.  It wouldn't be 
something I could get around to for a while.  Rather than letting this 
proposed syntax get lost in the discussion list, maybe it would be a 
good idea to put this under a patch or something in SourceForge.  There 
wouldn't be an actual patch there just yet, unfortunately, but it would 
be a reminder for later?  Should we do that?

For the 3D interpretation, how about just coloring the x-y plane 
portion?  Another alternative might be the back three sides of a 3-space 
cube, but I don't know if that would have an appealing look.  
Individually controlling plane colors?...  that's over doing it in my 
opinion.

...

With the rgb color format.  Those are fine.  Also, I added a tuple 
format for the binary data options, to represent points in 2-space or 
3-space.  For example, (1.5,3.5) or (4.5, 3.3, 2.2).  Could those be 
used in other places?  E.g.,

set key ... background rgb (0.3, 0.2, 0.57)

[Writing this just now makes it seem better in my mind than in type.]  
If so, maybe the tuple code could be made part of the parser.  I'm not 
strongly advocating it, just tossing it out to the list.

Dan