Re: Tics, minor tics, labels...

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

On Sunday 14 August 2005 03:38 pm, you wrote:
> On Sat, 13 Aug 2005, Ethan A Merritt wrote:
> > 	set xtics auto
> > 	set xtics include ("Pi" pi 0)
> > 	set xtics include ("2Pi" pi*2 0)
> >    will auto-generate tics and include specific labels at pi and 2pi.
>
> Similar commands are things like "set label", which IIRC behaves in a
> much different way - no extra keyword is needed. Of course, using the
> same sort of syntax as set label would break any existing scripts that
> contain multiple explicit tics statements, which I imagine are
> relatively uncommon.

Yeah. This is where the goal of backwards compatibility runs headlong
into the goal of fixing design bugs.  I think it is a bug that successive
user tic specifications are not cumulative.  But that is not nearly so 
clear for the case of switching between automatic and manual tic placement.
If we were to make the default behaviour cumulative, then we would have to
add a mechanism to explicitly turn *off* the previous tic scheme before
selecting a new one:
	set xtics auto
	plot "foo"
	set xtics noauto
	set xtics ("Manual placement" ...)
	replot

That would definitely break backwards compatibility.


> b) Is it actually the "verb" that needs to be changed, as in:
> unset xtics
> set xtics auto
> add xtics ("pi" pi 0)
> add xtics ("2pi" 2*pi 0)
> show xtics

I like that idea, but it's too radical a change to the syntax.
If we were to introduce "add" as a major command, people
would expect to be able to use it for other purposes as well.

-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle 98195-7742