Re: plot templates and options lists for set, plot etc.

[John W. Eaton]

On  7-Jun-2009, Ben Abbott wrote:

| On Jun 7, 2009, at 8:46 AM, John W. Eaton wrote:
| 
| > When the graphics property classes were written, it seemed easier to
| > simply return the internal data as a structure instead of writing
| > special code to print it.
| 
| Matlab returns a structure for both p=get(h) and p=set(h). If  
| nargout==0 then lists are printed.
| 
| The set(h) functionality can be useful in that is displays the default  
| values for each properties (where defaults exist).

OK.  I now see that Matlab's documentation also says that set can be
called with

  set (h, struct)

with the structure specifying property names and values, and

  set (h, property_names, property_values)

with the property names and values specified as cell arrays.  The
property names cell array is supposed to be a 1xN cell array, but
since H may be a vector of handles (presumably all corresponding to
the same type of graphics object), property_names may be an MxN array
of values, with M == length (H).

So it would be great to have a patch that implements these features.
To answer Thorsten's earlier question about where the dispatching
should happen, I suppose it makes sense for the graphics_object::set
function to be the one to dispatch on the types of the arguments.

Thanks,

jwe