Re: gset sends binary plot data to stdout

[daniel . sebald]

> I am transferring the discussion to maintainers list.
> It seems out of place on the bug list.
> Please adjust CC accordingly.
>
> Quentin Spencer wrote:
>> Dmitri A. Sergatskov wrote:
>>
>>> John W. Eaton wrote:
>>>
>>>> How about the following changes then?  I think this will eliminate
>>>> problems with automatic_replot, since it completely eliminates that
>>>> variable.  The higher-level plotting functions now issue explicit
>>>> replot commands.  The lower level ones never do.  So we should get the
>>>> desired mostly-Matlab-compatible behavior.  If people are using the
>>>> lower-level plotting commands, then they should know what to do,
>>>> because gnuplot also requires explicit replot commands.
>>>>
>>>> Comments?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I guess it would take some getting used to, but I personally prefer
>>> not to have automatic replots at all. The data I am dealing with
>>> often very large and plots take few seconds. So if I forgot to
>>> set axes labels and title before plotting the data, I would
>>> have to endure multiple replots...
>>
>>
>> Good point. I haven't tried plots with large amounts of data in octave
>> for a while, but I remember it being slow. It seemed to me at the time
>> that a big cause of slowness was transfering data by ascii files to
>> gnuplot. Is anyone familiar enough with gnuplot development to know
>> whether there is interest in supporting other ways of transferring data?
>>
>
> Development version of gnuplot (4.1) has binary data support for 2d
> plotting... But anyway it looks like a long shot to me.


I wrote the binary interface code for the very reason you are discussing. 
More specifically, I wanted an image routine in gnuplot.  Transfering a 1M
image took about 8 seconds.  Too slow.  I've an image M-file which writes
data to a temp file using Octave's fwrite and uses gnuplot's binary
feature.    That takes three quarters of a second to transfer and display
a 1M image if I recall correctly.  Tolerable.  I've a pentium 4 933 MHz,
133 MHz FSB.  A klunker by today's standards.

I find plotting of x/y, x/y/z and image files fairly efficient in gnuplot.
 Well, good enough.

Dan