Re: linestyles in gnuplot

[Tatsuro MATSUOKA]

----- Original Message -----

> From: Rik 
> To: Mike Miller ; Daniel J Sebald 
> Cc: John W. Eaton 
; Octave maintainers mailing list <address@hidden>
> Date: 2016/9/3, Sat 06:32
> Subject: Re: linestyles in gnuplot
> 
> On 09/02/2016 01:19 PM, Mike Miller wrote:
>>  On Fri, Sep 02, 2016 at 15:10:30 -0500, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
>>>  I've pulled gnuplot 4.6.6 from that project's version control.  
> I had a bit
>>>  of problem compiling and had to hack the "prepare" file.  Got 
> it to compile.
>>>  But I have no gnuplot Qt terminal (probably because I've switched 
> to Qt 5.0
>>>  on my system).  When I try the "wxt" terminal, I see some 
> really bad looking
>>>  errors.  But, if I switch to GNUTERM='x11' terminal in may 
> .bashrc file, and
>>>  run
>>> 
>>>  plot (1:10, '--')
>>>  print -dpng 'test.png'
>>> 
>>>  I see dotted lines for both the X11 plot and the PNG file.
>>  I see dotted lines in both as well.
>> 
>>  With gnuplot 4.4 I see no line at all, just an empty axis, both in the
>>  X11 terminal and in the PNG file.
>> 
> 
> I'm using the package gnuplot-x11 4.6.6-2 from Ubuntu.  I used the attached
> scripts do_plot.m and run_do_plot.m to test x11, qt, and wxt terminals. 
> For me, they all produce solid lines regardless of the linestyle.  If I
> install the package gnuplot-qt 4.6.6-2, then gnuplot-x11 is automatically
> removed, but at least the qt terminal will then show linestyles correctly. 
> The 'wxt' terminal isn't recognized in this case, and 'x11' 
> still doesn't
> respect the linestyle.  It appears to be a visual thing only (although that
> is still bad).  When I print the plot the line has the correct linestyle.
> 
> This doesn't affect me personally, I've moved up to gnuplot 5.0.3 to 
> escape
> the weirdness with 4.X.  This makes me agnostic about whether this gets
> resolved for the release.
> 
> --Rik


Linestyle implementation in gnuplot has changed drastically changed in version 
5.
Before version 5, the line style implementation differ between terminals.
After version 5, the line style implementation is unified in all terminals 
The linestyle  can be changed. The below is a part of RELEASE_NOTE of gnuplot 
5.0.0.

* Earlier versions of gnuplot used the keyword "linetype" to mean both
  the color and the solid/dot/dash pattern of a line.  Version 5 has
  separate keywords "linecolor" and "dashtype".  You can use these keywords
  directly in a plot command or assign any desired color and a dash pattern
  to a linetype.  The program now provides a default set of 8 linetypes, all 
solid.
  You can change these or add new linetypes as you please. You do not need
  to change the current terminal or terminal mode in order to use dashed lines.

The gnuplot 5 appeared beginning of January of 2015.
I think that it is a choice to drop supporting gnuplot 4 from octave 4.2
as Dmitri insists elsewhere.
http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Updated-octave-plot-compare-tp4679338p4679360.html


Windows version of octave binary package includes gnuplot 5.0.4 and
gnuplot 5.0.4 binaries can be easily available from gnuplot official site.

For Mac OSX, volunteers release gnuplot 5.0.3.
http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/pub/gnuplot/

On many linux distro, gnuplot on the repository is still 4.6.
Of course, one can build 5.0.x from source and it is not so difficult.

Tatsuro