From owner-help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Mon Dec  2 19:55:40 1996
Subject: Re: Matlab ginput
From: Joao Cardoso <jcard at merlin dot inescn dot pt>
To: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 96 01:43:42 GMT

 
Hi,

 | With regard to the above: I haven't used 3.6-beta, but am a long-time user
 | of gnuplot-3.5. In 3.5, the "set size <anything>" command sets the size of
 | the total /plotting/ area, including tic-labels, axis labels, plot title,
 | etc. The /graph/ itself (i.e. the axes and the plotted points) fits into
 | this according to the space taken up by the "furniture". Therefore it is
 | not possible to directly control the size of the /graph/, and you can only
 | get a 1:1 aspect ratio for the /axes/ by experiment. Also, a size setting
 | that gives 1:1 on a screen display may well give non-1:1 when printed on
 | paper. I know there were intentions to address these and other questions
 | during the development of 3.6, but can't answer for where they're at.

The WhatsNews of gnuplot pre3.6-pl315 says:

in release 293/294
  set size square has been generalised to
    set size { square | ratio <r> | noratio }
    where <r> is an aspect ratio of height / width

in release 162/164
   set size [{no}square] x,y  - tries to plot with aspect ratio 1
   - seems to work great for postscript
   - please check with your favourite driver
   - uses relative sizes of tics to determine required size.

So it seems that they try, but not completely succedd,
Joao


--
Joao Cardoso, INESC  |  e-mail: jcardoso at inescn dot pt
R. Jose Falcao 110   |  tel:    + 351 2 2094345
4000 Porto, Portugal |  fax:    + 351 2 2008487