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Re: Re: Clever Tricky Solutions

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg94210] Re: [mg94187] Re: Clever Tricky Solutions
  • From: DrMajorBob <btreat1 at austin.rr.com>
  • Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2008 05:43:41 -0500 (EST)
  • References: <27271771.1228394784179.JavaMail.root@m02>
  • Reply-to: drmajorbob at longhorns.com

I fully agree, Helen.

On semantic grounds, I believe "default" and "Automatic" should be  
synonymous, BTW.

Bobby

On Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:56:52 -0600, Helen Read <hpr at together.net> wrote:

> congruentialuminaire at yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>> I was thinking that maybe this is just a bug which Mathematica V6  
>> introduced
>> and which the PlotRange -> All specification "fixes". Indeed when I
>> ran this on a V5.2 system, both graphs show as coded by Donald. I wish
>> a WRI team member [coder or tester] would look into this and get back
>> to all of us about:
>>
>> - is this a bug? Is it "fixed" in V7?
>> - did the PlotRange default value [when unspecified] become different
>> in V6, necessitating the need for this "fix" provided by David and
>> Bobby?
>
> This was discussed here at length when v6 came out last year. WRI
> changed the default behavior of Show beginning with 6.0, because,
> according to them, with the various new graphics options (Filling, etc.)
> introduced in v6, it "often" does not make sense to combine the
> PlotRanges of the individual graphics. So instead, Show now uses the
> PlotRange from the first graphic by default. The v7 documentation for
> Show discusses this under "Possible Issues" with an example illustrating
> that "Show uses options from the first graphic". It suggests using
> PlotRange->All to see the entire plot. However, PlotRange->All often
> gives terrible results, so I tell my students to always set
> PlotRange->Automatic in Show, which makes it behave the way it did
> pre-v6. They often forget to do this, though, and don't understand why
> their plots are cut off.
>
> I greatly dislike this behavior, as I virtually *never* want the
> PlotRange from the first plot. Rather, I want the PlotRanges combined
> automatically by default, as Show did prior to v6. On the rare occasion
> where I need something else, I can always specify the PlotRange
> explicitly. I think it would make a lot more sense to have
> PlotRange->Automatic the default in Show, with some way to set it to use
> the PlotRange from the 1st graphic or the 2nd etc. if you need to.
> Something like PlotRange->{1} to get the PlotRange from the first
> graphic, or whatever.
>
> SetOptions[Show, PlotRange -> Automatic] does not even work, BTW. You
> get an error that "PlotRange is not an option for Show". So my students
> and I are stuck having to type in PlotRange->Automatic about 99% of the
> time when we use Show. If Automatic was still the default, we would
> rarely have to specify a PlotRange in Show.
>



-- 
DrMajorBob at longhorns.com


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