On 2008-11-20 20:01-0000 Andrew Ross wrote: > On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 11:32:04PM +0000, trc wrote: >> Hi, >> >> Andrew Ross wrote: >> <... snipped ...> >>> If you look in plbox.c and at pl(xys)tik in pltick.c then it appears that >>> the axes and ticks are drawn as one line. For example, for the bottom of >>> the box you start in the bottom left corner, draw along to the first >>> tick mark then draw a line up/down and back, ending up on the axis, draw >>> the next segement of the line bounding the box and so on. >>> >>> To me this seems a slightly perverse way of doing it. Much cleaner would >>> be to draw the box and then mark on each tick separately. I assume there >>> was some logic behind this originally, perhaps it worked better for some >>> of the early drivers? It is hard to see how. >> >> I'm guessing it was written for pen plotters to save time raising and >> lowering the pen, and the extra pen movements to draw the ticks separately. > > Sounds entirely plausible. Probably not a big motivation these days > though.
I agree. I have a lot of bad experiences with pen plotters in my memory banks (such as having to put special commands in to agitate the pen to get the india ink to start flowing and also putting in special delay loops to let the ink dry before rolling on to the next plot so your plot wouldn't smear). Therefore, I am really glad pen plotters have long since passed into history. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
