From graphics-request at octave dot org Mon Feb 13 14:29:29 2006 Subject: Re: Handle graphics plotting functions From: Daniel J Sebald To: Quentin Spencer CC: Shai Ayal , Sebastien Loisel , octave-graphics Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:36:52 -0600 Quentin Spencer wrote: > Daniel J Sebald wrote: > >> Shai Ayal wrote: >> >>> Sebastien, >>> >>> I meant to cc the list but I hit the "reply" instead of "reply-all". >>> I'm cc'ing the list on this one. >>> >>> Anyway, I am not sure I understand all of your email. I will start by >>> presenting my ideas and octplot: >>> >>> handle graphics >>> =========== >>> I see handle graphics as way for the user to gain total control of the >>> plot. This allows for tweaking which is so often needed when making a >>> formal plot (i.e. for a paper/presentation) and for inventing whole >>> new kinds of graphs and building them using the primitive building >>> blocks available. Both these features are missing in gnuplot. >> >> >> >> What's missing in gnuplot? > > > > Two things come to mind: > 1. better way of passing binary data to gnuplot--plotting large data > sets and big 3d plots are extremely slow. Well, of course my response (which I know you don't want to hear) is that binary data transfer is in the upcoming release, which it is (pipe or file... with checks for endianess and that sort of thing). > 2. regular releases--everytime someone complains about a missing > feature, we're told that the elusive gnuplot 4.1 has that feature. Yes, > I can get it from CVS, but John isn't going to incorporate code in > octave that uses those features they don't exist in a widely available > version of gnuplot. I hear you on this one, Quentin. The 4.0 release was marked by a lot of work to upgrade web pages, binaries, repositories, etc. and I'd hoped that after that incremental releases would be relatively painless. All I can say right now is that there is talk of 4.2 in the near future and, although I'm not a main developer, my guess is some time this summer. Dan