Re: support for advanced gnuplot features (was: Plotting semi-trasnparent patches?)

[Kai Habel]

Ben Abbott schrieb:
> On Monday, January 26, 2009, at 10:12AM, "Kai Habel" <address@hidden> wrote:
>   
>> Soren Hauberg schrieb:
>>     
>>> Hi All
>>>
>>> Is there a way to make a patch (as produced by the 'patch' command)
>>> semi-transparent? I tried setting the 'facealpha' property to 0.5 but
>>> that didn't do what I expected.
>>>
>>> BTW. I'm running a checkout of the development sources from some time
>>> yesterday.
>>>
>>> Soren
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Help-octave mailing list
>>> address@hidden
>>> https://www-old.cae.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/help-octave
>>>   
>>>       
>> Using a development version of gnuplot (4.3.cvs) this can be implemented
>> fairly easy. See attached patch. I am hesitating in providing a full
>> changeset, since we would depend on a development version of gnuplot. I
>> see no easy way to check for this gnuplot feature otherwise we could
>> support this conditionally. I think we have to wait for gnuplot release
>> which supports this feature. 
>>
>> Kai
>>
>> diff -r 0eb83938c8bc scripts/plot/__go_draw_axes__.m                         
>>  
>> --- a/scripts/plot/__go_draw_axes__.m   Sun Jan 18 22:01:36 2009 +0100       
>>  
>> +++ b/scripts/plot/__go_draw_axes__.m   Mon Jan 26 16:02:02 2009 +0100       
>>  
>> @@ -568,8 +568,8 @@                                                          
>>  
>>               if (mono)                                                      
>>                 colorspec = "";                                              
>>               else                                                           
>> -                colorspec = sprintf ("lc rgb \"#%02x%02x%02x\"",            
>>  
>> -                                     round (255*color));                    
>>  
>> +                colorspec = sprintf ("lc rgb \"#%02x%02x%02x\" fillstyle 
>> transparent solid %f",
>> +                                     round (255*color), obj.facealpha);     
>>                    
>>               endif                                                          
>>                   
>>               withclause{data_idx} = sprintf ("with filledcurve %s",    
>>
>>     
>
> Kai,
>
> I think it makes sense to start a discussion about what version of gnuplot 
> will be required by the upcoming 3.2 release and whether or not conditional 
> support for more recent gnuplot builds should be included.
>
> For example, I have a local copy of gnuplot_drawnow that respects 
> set(gcf,"position") for the x11 terminal (both window position and size are 
> respected). My patch requires a very recent build of the gnuplot developers 
> sources (it should also work with 4.2.4+).
>
> Regarding conditional support, this is easily done by using 
> __gnuplot_version__() and compare_versions().
>
> Ben
>
> p.s. for this context, I've switched to address@hidden
>
>
>
>   
But __gnuplot_version__ gives just:
octave:1> __gnuplot_version__
ans = 4.3.0
octave:2>

So, what is missing here is the actual checkout date. We can not
determine reliably whether this cvs checkout does support a feature or not.

I think we should require the most recent release version of gnuplot
(4.2.4) for the octave development tree. If we can *safely* determine
features of the gnuplot development tree (4.3), those could be supported
too. But I would do this on case-by-case basis.

I think it is o.k. to require for a new octave release the most recent
release of gnuplot (4.2.4 at the moment). But others might see this
different.

Kai