From help-request at octave dot org Mon Feb  7 08:02:29 2005
Subject: Re: black and white printable graphs
From: Quentin Spencer <qspencer at ieee dot org>
To: NZG <ngustavson at emacinc dot com>
CC: help at octave dot org
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 08:05:08 -0600

NZG wrote:

>Currently when I generate graphs I use the octave-forge print utility to 
>create jpg's and then import them into PDF's
>
>i.e.
>plot(n,(ylow+yhigh),"^;;6");
>title('y(n)');
>xlabel('n');
>ylabel('y');
>print('graph5.jpg','-djpg')
>
>I've discovered, however, that the colored lines of plot utility do not show 
>up at all on my black and white printer.
>
>I have also discovered that the Octave plot utility doesn't seem to be able to 
>generate black lines.
>
>Am I missing something?
>How is this typically done?
>
>thx,
>NZG. 
>  
>
First, if you're importing the files into PDF, I would suggest exporting 
into postscript. The result will look better and have smaller file size 
than JPG. I believe the line colors are different, and I think one of 
them is black. If you export into black and white postscript, all of the 
lines are black with different patterns. Another option is to export 
into Xfig format, which can be then converted directly to PDF by recent 
versions of Xfig.

The lack of ability to get black linestyle in gnuplot on screen is one 
of gnuplot's many limitations. If you type "man gnuplot", it tells how 
to change the default linecolors in gnuplot at startup. I'm not sure how 
to do this in the context of octave, but it would be really nice if 
gnuplot gave better control over colors.

-Quentin



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