Re: unwanted multiple plots

[Glenn Golden]

Quentin Spencer writes:
> Dmitri A. Sergatskov wrote:
> 
> > In my opinion use of 'gset' functions should be discouraged.
> 
> I agree. I do occasionally use gset for low level stuff like putting 
> arrows on the plot and things like that. There are some occasions where 
> I also use a 'gset nokey' to turn off the key that is enabled by 
> default. It occurs to me that in the competing product, you don't get a 
> key unless you ask for one. If we wanted true compatibility, maybe the 
> plot function should be modified to turn the key off until the user 
> turns it on with the legend command from octave-forge. The presence of 
> the key is especially a nuisance when plotting a very large number of 
> lines: the key can cover most of the plot.
> 

I think that gset usage depends very much on the type of work you're
doing.

For me, 90% of my plots are throwaways, for my own immediate use
only, e.g. interactively observing the progress of some experiment
or simulation. In that regime I constantly use gset commands for
things like changing the axes ranges so I can home in on some
particular area of interest in the plot, as the simulation runs.
Life would be unbearable without gset/replot/gset/replot.

For the remaining 10% of my plotting cases, where I actually want
to generate an archival result (e.g., for lab notebook, publishing,
whatever) I usually use a hardcopy-oriented package anyway (e.g.,
epstk) so I can have the degree of exact control that I want in that
situation.

Glenn



-------------------------------------------------------------
Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
How to fund new projects:  http://www.octave.org/funding.html
Subscription information:  http://www.octave.org/archive.html
-------------------------------------------------------------