Flickering movies

[Ben Abbott]

On Thursday, June 25, 2009, at 10:45AM, "Marco Caliari" <marco.caliari at univr.it> wrote:
>Dear maintainers,
>
>I'm not sure I will describe a bug or just a different behavior, so I'm 
>writing to the maintainers' list.
>The execution of the following code in Octave 3.0.5
>
>x = linspace(-1,1);
>for i = 1:50
>   plot(x,i*x.^2)
>   axis([-1,1,0,50])
>   pause(0.1)
>end
>
>produces a nice and fluent "movie". In particular, the axis box seems 
>fixed (it is fixed to my eyes), and only the curve inside moves. With 
>3.2.0, I get a very flickering movie, with the axis box clearly redrawn 
>at each step. What is strange, moreover, is that if I change
>
>pause(0.1)
>
>with
>
>pause(0.01)
>
>the axis box changes its dimensions during the loop and so the illusion of 
>a movie disappears. I'm using gnuplot 4.2.5.

Marco, I see the same effect.

This "feature" has been present since Gnuplot allowed the x11 window position and size to be set. Gnuplot allows the x11 window position and size to be set for gnuplot 4.2.5 and later.

Unfortunately, I've been unable to demonstrate this behavior using gnuplot scripts (i.e. no Octave). Thus, I'm inclined to conclude the problem is with the plot stream octave send's to gnuplot, but have been unable to debug (isolate) the problem.

Ben