Re: gnuplot backend (was Re: Patch to add axis position property)

[Shai Ayal]

On 8/14/07, Daniel J Sebald <address@hidden> wrote:

> Yes, you may; valid question.  John has stated this now and then.  However, 
> I'm a little more comfortable with gnuplot than most, I suppose, for several 
> reasons.  Yes, gnuplot has its limitations and has been feature-barren in the 
> past.  However, there are a few developers that have added features at a 
> faster pace lately.  The advantages are the wealth of output formats, 
> especially latex/ps.  To someone with a command line, linux and nice final 
> plot (with some work) computer philosophy, that is preferred over the more 
> GUI-like plotting.  Also, gnuplot is an interpreter, as opposed to being 
> compiled into Octave.  Some see that as a disadvantage, perhaps speed wise, 
> but my guess is that compiling an output-format-rich plotting library into 
> Octave would be more work than one thinks.  One would have to program the 
> margins, font size, color etc. inside Octave, probably no less work than 
> __go_draw_axes__.m.  Then, one step further, I think the goal is GUI 
> interactive fine-tuning!
 , w
> hich makes the programming task even greater.
>
> Which brings up the main issue, i.e., someone or a group of individuals with 
> time to dedicate to an Octave graphics engine.  Paying someone to do that 
> might get the ball rolling, but I'm not suggesting that.

I agree that this is no small task. However, we do not have to start
from scratch. There are already programs out there which implement a
lot of this functionality -- octplot, yapso, oplot, knewplot and more.
It's still a lot of work, but not as much as starting from scratch.
I have already started this, and I will try to make it as
programmer-friendly as possible so that others will be able to
contribute

> On the other hand, the handle graphics transition went more smoothly than I 
> expected (relatively speaking), so maybe I'm over-estimating the amount of 
> work.  Also, I think that what John has set up now is nice.  All the 
> engine-dependent code is in __go_draw_axes__.m, __go_close_all__.m, etc.  
> (i.e., "graphics output") and there is little if any core graphics code in 
> these files.  If these were bundled under one subdirectory, they could be 
> considered a package, of which gnuplot support is just another option that 
> could be selected when Octave is installed.  Whether eventually that means 
> internal compiled functions (for a little extra speed), external functions, 
> don't know.  This ability to select graphics engine would be a feature in 
> itself.

Yes, I think that gnuplot should stay an option -- It is mature,
stable and produces very nice graphs in a variety of output formats.
This functionality will take a lot of time to achieve in any other
back-end

Shai