Re: gnuplot in Octave review

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

2009/2/10 Petr Mikulik <address@hidden>:
> "Octave by default uses the curiously-named gnuplot (it has nothing to do
> with the GNU project)"
>
> Your review is about Octave, so why do you put this funny personal opinion
> into this text?

There's nothing opinionated about it except "curiously named", but
maybe you think it's natural to use "gnu" for free software that
doesn't have anything to with GNU. Many other people, however, often
believe gnuplot has something to do with GNU.

> Gnuplot is not a tool for 3D scene modelling. It has indeed some other
> limitations. However, many properties changed in recent years. Which
> "complex 3d plotting" does not it support? Can you give examples? You are
> welcome to contribute to both sides, Octave as well as gnuplot.

Unless it's changed recently, gnuplot doesn't do lighting and
shading... as I recall, it also had problems, with rending multiple 3d
surfaces and which surface should be visible and which not, but maybe
that has changed recently too. It also seems a little slow to me when
trying to render surfaces at high resolution (e.g. 100x100 meshgrid),
especially noticeable when trying to rotate said surface.

Gnuplot's limitations are obvious in various ways, and the gradual
move to the OpenGL backend is a generalised acknowledgment of this.
Not to mention that its output is ugly compared to OpenGL:

     http://platinum.linux.pl/~jordi/piccies/gnuplot-vs-octaviz.png

Something I would like some day in Octave (I know, I know, "show us
the code") is something like Matlab's movie-making abilities. I think
gnuplot is a bit limited for that purpose. Right now I generate
individual frames and stitch them together with mplayer or ffmpeg.
Perhaps if I can assume a dependency on ffmpeg or mplayer, I could be
able to code up m-files that did movies in Octave as in Matlab.

There's nothing wrong with gnuplot other than its funny name and that
it doesn't do everything we want it to do. It's otherwise a fine piece
of software. :-)

- Jordi G. H.