Re: [Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #64956] contour plots should accept "edgecolor" property for Matlab compatibility

[Alain . Cochard]

Thanks again for the feedback.

Pantxo Diribarne writes on Mon  4 Dec 2023 09:08:

 > @OP: Please answer directly on the savannah web interface, mail
 > answers are not supported.

I won't do that.  It's very painful for me to leave emacs and use the
web interface.  (It's actually a complaint I had -- I would submit
much more bug reports if a "normal" email way could be used. But I
digress.)

 > One of the main reasons why Octave doesn't support most
 > undocumented ML "features" is as I said : we may well be working to
 > introduce a "feature" that will disappear in the next ML version
 > (it has happened to me as a contributor for some root figure
 > properties, I won't do the same mistake twice!). In short the "big
 > deal" is the finite, small, number of developers and the very large
 > number of missing *documented* features that those dev could work
 > on.

I came to this conclusion ("not a big deal") in view of how fast it
was to submit a patch for 'edgecolor', which looked rather minimal.
But OK, I can understand your point; thanks for taking the time to
explain it to me.

 > Now if you think the doc is unclear, you are very welcome to
 > propose a modification that would make it more in line with how
 > things really work.

It is virtually impossible for someone like me, who knows very little,
to propose modifications.  What I can easily see, though, is that is
it not explicit enough.  To repeat myself about 'help contour':

   The appearance of contour lines can be defined with a line style
   STYLE in the same manner as 'plot'.  Only line style and color are
   used; Any markers defined by STYLE are ignored.

I don't see how any beginner would not, from this excerpt, end up
trying the 'color' property.  But I have no idea of how to modify this
in order to make it better.

Also, I have already suggested a modification in the error message

   "error: set: unknown hggroup property Color"

i.e., couldn't it be something like

   "error: set: unknown hggroup property Color; perhaps you want
   the EdgeColor property instead" ?

But again, for the same reason as above, I don't really know if this
makes any sense at all.



-- 
EOST (École et Observatoire des Sciences de la Terre) 
ITE (Institut Terre & Environnement) | alain.cochard@unistra.fr
5 rue René Descartes   [bureau 110]  | Phone: +33 (0)3 68 85 50 44 
F-67084 Strasbourg Cedex, France     | [ slot available for rent ]