plot issues

[Ben Abbott]

On Jun 5, 2009, at 11:24 AM, Petr Mikulik wrote:

>>> I wonder whether "set term pdf" is used if "set term" shows  
>>> "pdfcairo" but
>>> not "pdf"?
>>
>> I'm confused by your question. Do you suggest that "pdfcairo" be  
>> used in the
>> event that "pdf" is not present". Personally, I like the  
>> ghostscript solution,
>> but these are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
>
> What do you mean by "pdf is not present but pdfcairo is present"?
> If either of pdflib or pdfcairo libraries are compiled with gnuplot,
> then in both cases
> 	set term pdf
> sets the output to pdf. There is no "different" command. The command
> 	set term
> shows that there is "pdfcairo" terminal which is the full name of  
> the new
> pdf terminal, i.e.
> 	set term pdfcairo
> can be used as well.
>
> So, how does Octave know/detect whether gnuplot has/has not pdf (any)
> terminal?

Ok, it appears I'm confused. On Mac OSX both pdf and pdfcairo are  
listed in GPVAL_TERMINALS. Do I infer correctly that by selecting the  
"pdf" that gnuplot will use pdfcairo terminal driver?

Regarding how we know what terminals are present we obtain a list from  
the GPVAL_TERMINALS variable. This is done in gnuplot_drawnow.m by ...

	available_terminals = __gnuplot_get_var__ (plot_stream,  
"GPVAL_TERMINALS");

Ben