Re: how to avoid plot legend

[John W. Eaton]

On  5-Dec-2005, James R. Phillips wrote:

| On a related subject: maybe it is Stockholm Syndrome, but I've grown somewhat
| comfortable with gnuplot.  While I recognize the compatibility goals of the
| project, I believe I and many users would be satisified with improving the
| speed and convenience of using gnuplot vs implementing the entire handle
| graphics enchilada.  Note: I am not recommending this approach, just
| identifying my perspective as a user.

If you like gnuplot, then I think the best thing is to use it
directly, by writing out data files and then using gnuplot to plot the
files.  I do this all the time, usually in combination with Make.
That way, the computations (done with Octave) are separated from
plotting (with gnuplot).   If a .m file changes, I generate new data.
If a .gp file changes, I generate a new plot, but I don't have to
perform the computations again just because a plot label changes.  I
find this works well.  For interactive use, I may make simple plots
from Octave, but I don't need all the control over line widths and
labels that gnuplot allows.  YMMV.

In any case, I don't think it is reasonable to expect Octave to give
you a 100% compatible gnuplot command parser at the Octave prompt.  It
seems like a waste of effort to try do duplicate the entire gnuplot
language inside Octave.  Implementing part of it seems to be worse
than not having it at all.  For example, we get an endless stream of
messages asking why

  gplot x with lines

works but

  gset xrange x_lo:x_hi

does not.  If we implement this particular feature, then we get
questions about other missing features.  If we implement most or all
of them, then we have to track changes to gnuplot, or people will
complain that Octave's implementation of gnuplot's language is not the
same as gnuplot.  Having this kind of problem with Matlab's language
is more than enough hassle.  I'd rather avoid another set of
compatibility issues.

jwe



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