Re: Automatic placement of the key

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

Ga=EBl Varoquaux wrote:
>     I just saw a figure in an article that had been made with gnuplot
> and the author did not bother move the key, that fell right in the curv=
e
> (try "plot [0:1] x" to see what I mean).=20

The pilot error happened even earlier.  It's almost never a good idea to =

have a key as part of the plot itself if the plot is to be used as a=20
figure in a larger document.  The description of what's in the plot=20
should go into the figure caption.

>     It might be interesting to have by default an automatic choice of
> where the key goes : top right by default, then an choice of top left,
> top middle, bottom right, bottom left, with a small algorithm that woul=
d
> choose the least encumbered part of the graph.

The problem is that this algorithm would have to be anything but small=20
to be usable.  In a nutshell, every object handed over from the core to=20
the terminal API for display would have to be analyzed and its effect=20
recorded.  To do it meaningfully, we'ld need to know the size of the key =

  area before we output anything to the terminal, which would entail a=20
re-design of the core drawing routines.