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Re: data plotting



On Tue, 1 Feb 2005, Jeffrey A. Edlund wrote:

> I have number of very finely sampled datasets x,y which I'd like to plot
> on the same greyscale figure. I'd like to make the curves distinguishable
> by using dashed, dotted, and solid lines.  Unfortunately it appears that
> the dotting and the dashing starts over at each data sample which just
> gives me a bunch of tiny dots regardless of the settings of
> dash_length() or dot_sep().
>
> Is there someway to change this behavior? Can the dashed line just be
> bent at the vertex instead of starting again?  This ability will be
> important for contour plots as well.
>
The current dashed/dotted styles do indeed draw one dash or dot per point.
ePiX used to use eepic.sty's dashed and dotted path styles, but they have
their own idiosyncrasies, and I believe are not better than the current
algorithm when a path contains lots of points. (To do a quick-and-dirty
check, compile an eepic figure with solid paths, then manually edit the
file, changing "\path" to "\dashed" or "\dotted".)

The dashed line algorithm could be re-written so that a dash takes up a
certain real page length (interpreted as arc length along the path), but
it would be a little painful to have the method work well, and it still
wouldn't help with dotted paths...

As a work-around, is it possible to cull your data manually before
plotting?

--Andy

Andrew D. Hwang			ahwang@mathcs.holycross.edu
Department of Math and CS	http://math.holycross.edu/~ahwang
College of the Holy Cross	(508) 793-2458 (Office: 320 Swords)
Worcester, MA, 01610-2395	(508) 793-3530 (fax)