From graphics-request at octave dot org Sun Nov 21 09:24:57 2004
Subject: Re: OctPlot ver 0.2.0 released
From: Rafael Laboissiere <rafael at debian dot org>
To: Shai Ayal <shaiay at yahoo dot com>
Cc: graphics at octave dot org
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 07:10:39 -0600


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* Shai Ayal <shaiay at yahoo dot com> [2004-11-20 21:40]:

> I have just released version 0.2.0 of octplot, available at
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/octplot/
> 
> I am eagerly waiting for your bug reports, feature requests and remarks.

I tried it and I must say that I am mostly impressed by your software.  Good
work! I may even consider packaging octplot for Debian.  I am not exactly a
fan of Matlab Hangle Graphics, but users will be very pleased to type:

    set (h, "color", "k")
    set (h, "linewidth", 3);

and get a heavy solid black line in the plot.  Zooming with the mouse is
also great.  Besides, the plots look much better than the gnuplot's ones,
both on screen and as PS files.

I have a couple of comments, though.  I compiled octplot in a Debian
unstable (sid) system with octave 2.1.63, FLTK 1.1.4, and octave-forge
2004.11.16.

1) Compilation fails when including the FLTK header files.  It seems that
   the FLTK distribution contains only *.H (uppercase "H") files and that
   including *.h files is deprecated.  This is a quite serious problem,
   which would prevent the automatic generation of packages (like with the
   Debian build daemons)

2) Running the demo in README fails with the following error message:

   octave:1> setup_octplot
   octave:2> h=plot(sin( (0:10000)/10000*2*pi),"b-");
   error: `octplot_command' undefined near line 40 column 10
   error: evaluating assignment expression near line 40, column 8
   error: evaluating for command near line 39, column 3
   error: called from `get' in file `/var/tmp/octplot/src/get.m'
   error: evaluating assignment expression near line 22, column 7
   error: called from `gcf' in file `/var/tmp/octplot/src/gcf.m'
   error: evaluating assignment expression near line 27, column 6
   error: called from `gca' in file `/var/tmp/octplot/src/gca.m'
   error: evaluating assignment expression near line 112, column 6
   error: called from `plot' in file `/var/tmp/octplot/src/plot.m'
   error: evaluating assignment expression near line 2, column 2

   The patch attached below fixes the problem.

3) Zooming does not work properly with subplots.  In the following demo:

   octave:1> setup_octplot
   octave:2> [b,a]=butter(5,[0.4,0.6],ßtop");
   octave:3> freqz(b,a);

   when a region is selected in the first subplot, the third subplot is
   zoomed. 

4) As a member of the PLplot development team, I am very pleased that
   octplot uses the contours algorithm of PLplot.  Plplot has very good
   algorithms for shading and 3D plots which you might consider using in
   octplot.

-- 
Rafael

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--- get.m	2004-11-15 11:10:46.000000000 +0100
+++ get.m-new	2004-11-21 12:48:50.000000000 +0100
 at @ -37,7 +37,7 @@
   out = cell();
   oi =1;
   for ii=1:length(hnd)
-    tt = octplot_command("get",hnd(ii),varargin{2:end});
+    tt = octplot_command("get",hnd(ii),varargin{2:length(varargin)});
     out(oi:oi+length(tt)-1) = tt;
     oi += length(tt);
   endfor

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