comp.lang.idl-pvwave archive: archive » Re: FSC

Home » Public Forums » archive » Re: FSC_PLOT defaults

Show: Today's Messages :: Show Polls :: Message Navigator
E-mail to friend

Re: FSC_PLOT defaults [message #74152 is a reply to message #74151]

Mon, 20 December 2010 14:57

David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001

Senior Member

Wayne Landsman writes:

> I am updating the plotting routines in the IDL Astronomy library ( e.g.
> AL_LEGEND, TVCIRCLE, PLOTERROR in http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ) to
> use the new Coyote routines FSC_PLOT, and FSC_COLOR(), and for example
> to allow colors to be specified by name. It is mostly going well
> but I do find it jarring going from the white on black of
>
> IDL> plot,indgen(10)
>
> to the black on white of
>
> IDL> fsc_plot,indgen(10)
>
> I'm old-fashioned enough to think that black on white does not show
> up as clearly on the screen, but I did not have a similar problem
> with the black on white of function graphics.
>
> The reason is that
>
> IDL> o = plot(indgen(10))
>
> is more comparable to something like
>
> IDL> fsc_plot,indgen(10),thick=2,xthick=2,ythick=2,charsize = 2, xticklen = !P.ticklen*2, yticklen=!p.ticklen*2
>
> to give the lines extra thickness (and clarity).
>
> Maybe it would be worth having a similar default display for
> FSC_PLOT (at the expense of having different defaults than PLOT).
> Another default I like in the function PLOT() is having exact X,Y
> ranges (X|Y|Style= 1). --Wayne

The central theme of my upcoming book is that there is
no real need for fancy new graphics. That almost everything
you need is already available to you via traditional graphics
commands IF you do a few simple things. One of those things
is write programs that work both on your display and in a
PostScript file. Of course, it is *possible* to do this
if one has a black background and one has a white background,
but if you use color at all (another theme of the book), then
this is all much harder to do.

Better, I thought, to make everything work the same.
Even old timers with schizophrenic brains catch onto
it fairly quickly and realize how easy it is to make things
work identically in the two different environments. :-)

That said, I've gone to some trouble to make sure these
routines work "naturally". If you set the background color
to "black", the drawing routines should draw in white.
I've just really changed the default background color.

I've no objection to changing the default line thickness
values, although I have tried to make these commands work
as normally as possible, even when "normally" sometimes
means sub-optimally. I really only tried to fix the things
I thought were obvious defects. (I do set exact axis ranges
on the FSC_Contour command, but personally, I don't mind
autoscaling axes on the Plot command most of the time.)

I do note that I *always* change line thicknesses when
I make a PostScript file, so maybe changing it everywhere
is not such a bad idea. Let me play with this a little and
see what I can do. Anything that makes these more useful
is what I am looking for.

We still have a month or so to experiment before
they are cast in stone. :-)

Cheers,

David

--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")

Report message to a moderator

[Message index]

		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: lecacheux.alain on Mon, 27 December 2010 00:51
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Fri, 24 December 2010 22:01
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Fri, 24 December 2010 10:55
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: Michael Galloy on Thu, 23 December 2010 21:05
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Thu, 23 December 2010 18:03
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: wlandsman on Thu, 23 December 2010 16:02
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: wlandsman on Thu, 23 December 2010 15:42
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: penteado on Thu, 23 December 2010 12:53
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: Mark[1] on Thu, 23 December 2010 12:35
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: lecacheux.alain on Thu, 23 December 2010 12:34
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Thu, 23 December 2010 11:10
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Thu, 23 December 2010 10:08
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: wlandsman on Thu, 23 December 2010 08:38
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Wed, 22 December 2010 09:11
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: lecacheux.alain on Wed, 22 December 2010 05:51
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: Bruce Bowler on Wed, 22 December 2010 05:22
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Tue, 21 December 2010 13:56
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: ben.bighair on Tue, 21 December 2010 12:38
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: Marc Buie on Tue, 21 December 2010 10:53
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Tue, 21 December 2010 09:58
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: ben.bighair on Tue, 21 December 2010 09:53
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Tue, 21 December 2010 08:37
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: wlandsman on Tue, 21 December 2010 08:19
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Tue, 21 December 2010 07:58
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: Paul Van Delst[1] on Tue, 21 December 2010 07:39
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Tue, 21 December 2010 07:19
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Tue, 21 December 2010 07:06
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Tue, 21 December 2010 06:51
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Tue, 21 December 2010 06:45
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: Marc Buie on Tue, 21 December 2010 05:58
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: penteado on Mon, 20 December 2010 18:03
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: ben.bighair on Mon, 20 December 2010 17:43
		Re: FSC_PLOT defaults By: David Fanning on Mon, 20 December 2010 14:57

Previous Topic:	Re: updating the coyote library
Next Topic:	Re: Hodograph plots of wind speed and direction

-=] Back to Top [=-

[ Syndicate this forum (XML) ] [

] [

]

Current Time: Fri Oct 10 09:23:12 PDT 2025

Total time taken to generate the page: 1.51984 seconds