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Groups > comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica > #2286

Re: and color via PlotStyle

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On 5/10/11 at 2:48 AM, noeckel@gmail.com (JUN) wrote:

>I don't want to sound too philosophical, but there seems to be a
>problem in drawing the line between Mathematica's internal logical
>consistency and the requirements of the user interface. In my
>opinion, Plot is part of the user interface, and this should give
>the designers of the function the freedom to make it friendlier to
>human users even if that comes at the price of departing (in a very
>harmless way) from language-specific dogmas.

The problem is one of implementation. Consider:

A user who wants to plot the solution space for 0 == x^2-a for
different values of a likely would want that plot to show a
single color. One way to generate that plot would be:

Plot[Sqrt[x] {-1, 1}, {x, 0, 5}]

Here, the argument to Plot is an expression that returns a list
of numeric values for each numeric value substituted for x. The
key question is how is Mathematica to determine when to see this
as a multivalued function consistent with this example or as a n
different functions?

Currently, that is resolved by deciding any explicit list given
to Plot is a list of n curves and anything not explicitly a list
is a single multivalued function to be plotted in a single
color. The rule could be made different. But that would simply
lead to different confusion and possibly greater difficulty when
creating some plots. Ultimately, anything other than a
pre-specified rule requires some sort of mind reading to divine
the users intent, clearly not possible.

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Re: and color via PlotStyle Bill Rowe <readnews@sbcglobal.net> - 2011-05-11 08:27 +0000
  Re: and color via PlotStyle JUN <noeckel@gmail.com> - 2011-05-12 08:32 +0000

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