DPlot

Suggestion:

In the generate menu, f(x,y1,y2,...), default the x range to the largest x range of the y curves nominated. At the moment it doesn't seem to default to anything useful.

It is actually using whatever values you entered the last time you used that command. But you're right, that's not especially useful in many cases.

But it also wouldn't be appropriate to suddenly change text box entries based on what you enter for the formula. Rather than basing the default range on whatever curves (if any) are referenced in the equation I'll change it to the X extents for the entire plot.

Sounds good. But won't there be a problem of the function being not defined out at the ends?

What it was doing was not understandable to the engineers I have using it. They keep asking me where their plot is.

Sounds good. But won't there be a problem of the function being not defined out at the ends?

I think we've reached an impasse here... or maybe not.

I can see automatically setting the extents if those text boxes are blank, but that would only ever happen the first time you use that function unless you manually clear them. So that's no good.

But what about a checkbox: "Use extents and spacing of 1st referenced curve, if any"? The wording needs work, but you get the idea. I'll have to think on this one a bit. There may be a situation where that's a bad idea, but I can't think of one off the top of my head.

I think that would work OK. At least it produces a visible result, and the user can still go in and specify/edit the range if required.

I've also noticed that the dialog will not take dates or times for the X value inputs. I had to temporarily change the X-axis format to default and show 4 digits of precision before I could put in something useful. Several of our users would have trouble with that.'

I do think, however, your suggestion about a checkbox "use extents and spacing of first referenced curve" would help that, but I would like the action of clicking the check box to show up in the edit fields before I clicked ok for the dialog. This would give a chance to tweak the values before plotting the curve. So clicking the check box on and off would toggle between the last used values and the calculated extents.

Also, if the check box always came up unchecked, ie, not persistent, then one could always toggle between DPlot's calculated extents and the user's last edits.

Hopefully, that made sense.

In this case it will need to be a pushbutton rather than a checkbox, but that's OK and makes more sense anyway.