On Thu, 9 Oct 2014, Sven Schreiber wrote:
> (1) a "plot" environment like the first one Allin
envisaged. That is, a
> block inside which we allow for special syntax which translates
> internally into gnuplot commands, but basically follows the old
> "gnuplot" command conventions. In other words, a pidgin language that is
> neither hansl not gnuplot. Allin's example
Again, what I don't like about it is that it represents an
over-differentiation of plotting sophistication. If I see myself
explaining to colleagues "well you could use the <new stripped-down>
gnuplot command, unless you want to have this other line color, in which
case you need to write down a 'plot' environment, but except if you want
to have the areas overlapping, because then you really need to write
gnuplot code directly" -- that would be a nightmare.
What I like about this is that it is in principle backend-independent,
i.e. in the future you could use the same "pidgin" commands to trigger
some other graphics engine in the background, if somebody wrote the
necessary bindings.
OTOH however there is a tradeoff; I think Allin is also right in that he
doesn't want to reinvent the wheel and thus chose to outsource the
plotting stuff to gnuplot. The logical implication then is that to
control plots users need to speak gnuplotish, instead of extending hansl
to that area.
Of course you could argue that gnuplot's results are just so great, only
the syntax bothers you. But is that really the general opinion? I
somehow doubt that.
I like this approach.
I fully agree that 4 approaches are too many; however, IMO "textplot"
could be scrapped: it's nice to have something that retains the flavour of
80x25 displays, but that's (as far as I'm concerned) just a sentimental
thing. I'm also ready to drop the idea of an extension to gnuplot of the
foreign block. After all, if you really really want to do really really
complex things, you'd probably want to export your data and start from
scratch with something else. And besides, you can always use the --input
switch.
So that would leave the stripped-dow version of the gnuplot command and
the new "plot" environment. And, like you said, this opens up the
possibility of using a different backend in the future. Plplot, for
example, whose output is very cool and has very nice C bindings. But
that's far into the future.
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Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali (DiSES)
Università Politecnica delle Marche
(formerly known as Università di Ancona)
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www2.econ.univpm.it/servizi/hpp/lucchetti
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