More on plotting scattered data

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

I'm starting to think that Octave really needs a function where you
give it a bunch of (x,y,z) triplets and it plots them as a surface
using a Delaunay triangulation on x and y, and gives an error if z is
not a function of x and y.

I want to type "surf(x,y,z)" where each of x, y, and z are vectors of
equal size and then have a triangulated surface popping up. I'm
getting a little tired of writing all this boilerplate code creating
an artificial mesh with rectangles instead of triangles that sort of
look likes the actual data that I do have but not quite, and
interpolating to that rectangular mesh.

However, I can't seem to find something quite this simple, not even
amongst the competition's toolboxes. Is there a reason for that? Is
the function I'm asking for quite that complicated to program? It
seems conceptually simple to me. Are there difficult cases I'm
forgetting?

We also seem to be limited by gnuplot which at present doesn't seem to
have necessary abilities to do this, although it wouldn't be too hard
to program with other backends like Octaviz's VTK.

Thoughts?
- Jordi G. H.