contour

[John W. Eaton]

On 24-Jan-2005, Daniel J Sebald <address@hidden> wrote:

| Anyone recall the issue with the comment below?:
| 
|  -- Function File:  contour (X, Y, Z, N)
|      Make a contour plot of the three-dimensional surface described by
|      Z.  Someone needs to improve `gnuplot''s contour routines before
|      this will be very useful.
| 
| What is the problem with gnuplot's contour?

The problem I was thinking of when I wrote that comment was that
gnuplot implements contour plots as a special type of 3D plot instead
of a 2D plot.  So even though the final graph has only two dimensions,
it has a much different appearance than other 2D plots produced by
gnuplot and it is somewhat harder to combine a contour plot with
general 2D data.

I think it would also be nice if it could embed the contour levels in
the plot lines (I recall that there were plotting packages from the
mid-eighties (or even before) that could do this).  Maybe gnuplot has
this feature now?  I haven't checked.

jwe