[Gretl-users] Could we please make the default graphing style nicer?

Dear all, this is a proposal which I have had in mind for a long time. Before starting, this thread is really just meant as a proposal, so please don't take it personally at all! :-) We all like gretl and gnuplot very much. But let's be honest, gnuplot's default plotting settings are not fancy at all. When I introduce gretl to potentially interested people, I instantly add "Not, this program is not from the 1990s, and yes, you can make the graphs much more fancy by your own". I am totally aware of the possibility to customize plots in a flexible manner using gretl but why not producing a "nice" graph per default for the user. Just compare the two graphs I attached. Isn't the RHS one not just more attractive? It only adds 3 additional lines of code and selects nicer colors and replaces crosses by points (pt 7): <extra-gnuplot-lines> # replace the default settings set linetype 1 lc rgb '#1B9E77' pt 7 # dark teal set linetype 2 lc rgb '#D95F02' pt 7 # dark orange set linetype 3 lc rgb '#7570B3' pt 7 # dark lilac set linetype 4 lc rgb '#E7298A' pt 7 # dark magenta set linetype 5 lc rgb '#66A61E' pt 7 # dark lime green set linetype 6 lc rgb '#E6AB02' pt 7 # dark banana set linetype 7 lc rgb '#A6761D' pt 7 # dark tan set linetype 8 lc rgb '#666666' pt 7 # dark gray # add Axes set style line 11 lc rgb '#808080' lt 1 set border 3 back ls 11 set tics nomirror out scale 0.75 <extra-gnuplot-lines\> I know that the meaning of "nice" is very subjective but I am sure we could find a compromise with regard to this ;-) Thus, I would like to propose to change the default plotting settings. For instance, have a look at the seaborn package for Python. Those graphs look really attractive per default. Another gnuplot example is a graph as you can find it here, and which uses a nice color scheme for lines and the borders.: http://www.gnuplotting.org/ease-your-plotting-with-config-snippets/ I also found a nice collection of color paletes for gnuplot here: https://github.com/Gnuplotting/gnuplot-palettes https://github.com/aschn/gnuplot-colorbrewer For scatter plots I also suggest to plot points instead of crosses per default -- it just looks more fancy :-) Please let me know what you think about this idea. Best, Artur