From maintainers-request at octave dot org Mon Jan 24 12:52:53 2005
Subject: contour
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: Daniel J Sebald <daniel dot sebald at ieee dot org>
Cc: octave maintainers mailing list <maintainers at octave dot org>,         graphics@octave.org
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 13:56:10 -0500

On 24-Jan-2005, Daniel J Sebald <daniel dot sebald at ieee dot org> wrote:

| Anyone recall the issue with the comment below?:
| 
|  -- Function File:  contour (X, Y, Z, N)
|      Make a contour plot of the three-dimensional surface described by
|      Z.  Someone needs to improve `gnuplot''s contour routines before
|      this will be very useful.
| 
| What is the problem with gnuplot's contour?

The problem I was thinking of when I wrote that comment was that
gnuplot implements contour plots as a special type of 3D plot instead
of a 2D plot.  So even though the final graph has only two dimensions,
it has a much different appearance than other 2D plots produced by
gnuplot and it is somewhat harder to combine a contour plot with
general 2D data.

I think it would also be nice if it could embed the contour levels in
the plot lines (I recall that there were plotting packages from the
mid-eighties (or even before) that could do this).  Maybe gnuplot has
this feature now?  I haven't checked.

jwe