Re: default colormap

[Carlo De Falco]

On 4 Nov 2015, at 00:02, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Sun, 2015-11-01 at 23:57 +0000, Carlo De Falco wrote:
> 
>> The purpose of this changeset:
>> http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/17e507df10e3 was to
>> change the default colormap for the 4.2 release.
> 
> Btw, why can't we just set it to parula? I can't see why this colour
> map is any different from our existing ones that match Matlab's. It
> doesn't matter how the Mathworks created parula as long as we
> replicate parula without consulting Matlab's source code.
> 
> How did we replicate the other colour maps?
> 
> - Jordi G. H.

Jordi,

The same discussion has gone on over at the matplotlib mailing list, 
I don't have the link at hand right now but I will try to find it.

IIRC the point is that it seems TMW are claiming "intellectual property" 
rights over the colormap itself, not the code that implements it.

Whether such a claim makes sense or not is unclear to me, but the reaction
of the matplotlib guys was: "well, if they do not wat us to use parula, why 
not try to do something better?" I like their approach ...

After all, do we really need compatibility at this level? 
There's good reasons to not use jet as the default colormap, but
do we really need to care that the default colormap be exactly the same as 
Matlab?


c.