>>>>> "Robert" == Robert Dodier writes:
Robert> On 7/27/05, Raymond Toy wrote:
Robert> At this point my recommendation is to turn on the gnuplot
Robert> option for a logarithmic plot when plot2d is given the log plot
Robert> option and the plot_format is gnuplot or mgnuplot,
Robert> and otherwise print a warning message and carry out the
Robert> log transform in plot.lisp (i.e., plot f(log(x)) instead of f(x)).
>>
>> I think I agree with what you say.
>>
>> But the log option really only means sample the x axis in a
>> logarithmic fashion. The resulting plot probably won't look too
>> different between the log-sampled and non-log-sampled versions,
>> because the adaptive plotting will make sure enough samples are taken.
Robert> Surely it's not too late for us to assign a different meaning to
Robert> the plot2d log option. Wouldn't it be more useful to the end user if
Robert> log = true means to make a logarithmic plot, with an understanding
Sure, we can do that.
Robert> that Maxima will do whatever is necessary to make it look right?
Robert> Perhaps I've misunderstood what you're getting at.
My fix was just a fix for an issue. I didn't try to design anything,
and I think that's what we really want to do. What is the appropriate
interface? Is that what we want? Will users want that? What happens
if some other plotting system gets used? What happens if the user
says do a log plot, but puts a gnuplot option of no log plot?
These are the kinds of things I was ignoring by just focusing on
enabling the user to tell maxima to do log sampling.
If someone wants to design the interface, I can help implement it.
Ray