Re: Plotting many curves

[johan19]

On Fri, Sep 04, 1998 at 02:07:05PM -0600, Huaiyu Zhu wrote:
> Here're a few oddities about plotting I've noticed.  There should be
> better ways of doing them:
> 
> 1. When using "plot" each curve generates a separate file /tmp/oct-*. 
> This seems very inefficient, especially if I want many line segments, like
> 
> |  |   || |  |    |
> |  |   || |  |    |
> -----------------------
> 
> axis ([-4 4 0 2]);
> x = randn(10,1); y = zeros(size(x));
> plot([x,x]',[y,y+.5]'); 
> 
> 2. How to remove all the legends?  (Someone might have posted the answer a
> short while a ago but I did not save it.)  How to make all the curves
> solid lines?

read the docs on gnuplot.  i use the info reader or i fire up a
gnuplot and read the info straight out of gnuplot's help.  (a `ghelp'
command for octave may be a useful addition.)  use `gset' in octave to
send args directly to gnuplot.  `gset nokey' is probably what you
want.

> 3. It also seems that I can't draw more than 24 lines in this way (because
> the legends would be out of page?).  In matlab I routinely draw thousands
> of lines.

with the poor interface to gnuplot (required due to gnuplot license
problems) drawing thousands of lines will be awkward at best.

> These might be due to the way octave interacts with gnuplot - but I can't
> believe the famous gnu philosophy could coexists with such strict
> limitations.

the problem is with gnuplot.  despite the name, gnuplot is *not* a GNU
software, nor does it fall under the GPL.  gnuplot's license is
awkward and stupid.

since gnuplot has such a retarded license, reworked binaries cannot be
distributed making octave on NT somewhat less smooth than one could
hope.  also gnuplot cannot be integrated into octave where it would
better belong as a library rather than a stand-alone.

i am all for getting rid of the gnuplot albatross and using a GPL
graphics library.  is this a direction we want to head in?  what do
others think?

-- 
Johan Kullstam address@hidden Don't Fear the Penguin!