Re: Color output for documentation eps images

[Ben Abbott]

On Thursday, December 03, 2009, at 03:28PM, "Rik" <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>>> Is BW default for PostScript a Matlab compatibility requirement?
>>> If not, it would seem much better to make the default color.  I have, in
>>> the past, regularly forgotten to set -color and had to redo plots.
>>> Alternatively, the build could be set back to PDF with the needed
>>> BB set somehow.
>>>
>>> In any case, it seems confusing to have different defaults for 
>>> PostScript and
>>> PDF.
>>>
>>> Michael
>>>     
>>
>> Unfortunately, that is how Matlab works :-(
>>   
>Maybe we don't need to follow them slavishly?  The documentation from
>Matlab is here:
>http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/ref/print.html. 
>There is a printopts.m file which is configurable to set the default
>print engine so at least there is a way to get around specifying
>'-color' for every single saved plot.
>
>Also, for consistency we should probably generate black and white
>postscripts when printing.  I just did a test and printed an image with
>no arguments.  My printer wasn't plugged in so I could take a look at
>the generated file in the printer spool.  It is a color file apparently
>generated with '-dpsc2'
>
>--Rik

I'd forgotten about Matlab's printopt.

Shall we add this to Octave?

We'd need to add a default implementation, and modify print.m to use it to 
determine the defaults it would provide.

We could also impliment printopt to accept arguments to permit the defaults to 
be changed for the session being run. That would make it easy to produce 
figures in the proper format for the documentation.

I think this is a better idea than diverging from compatibility with Matlab.

Thoughts?

Ben

Ben