Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: hacknews Subject: plotter circles and arcs speeded up Message-ID: <4160@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Tue, 31-Jul-84 17:03:17 EDT Article-I.D.: utzoo.4160 Posted: Tue Jul 31 17:03:17 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 31-Jul-84 17:03:17 EDT Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 14 The plot(3) software for the HP plotter has been improved to do small circles and arcs more quickly. It now exploits the obvious fact that a very small circle doesn't need to be drawn as a 72-sided polygon to make it look like a circle. The "chord angle" parameter of the plotter's circle and arc commands is now a function of the radius of the circle, with reversion to the 5-degree default for large circles. Arguably the plotter ought not to revert to the default for very large circles, since they do look slightly better when drawn with a smaller chord angle, but doing this makes them very slow. The default is a good compromise for the big stuff. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry