Enhancement request: please send binary data instead of ASCII to Gnuplot

[sergstesh]

I've been using Gaston for a while, and in the past even looked into its source code. I discovered then that Gaston sends ASCII data to Gnuplot. This is not wrong algorithmically, but it degrades speed. Speed is degraded because Gnuplot needs to parse ASCII data; also, amount of data is greater for ASCII than for binary.

Speed is not an issue with small data sets, but for large datasets it is an issue.

With the latest Gaston version using debug mode I see:

"

┌ Gaston in function gnuplot_send
│ plot '/tmp/jl_1ESmqP' i 0 
└

",

"

cat /tmp/jl_1ESmqP
0.0     0.15865525393145707
3.010299956639812       0.07864960352514257
4.771212547196624       0.041632258331775224
6.020599913279624       0.02275013194817922
6.989700043360188       0.012673659338734138
7.781512503836437       0.007152939217714829
8.450980400142567       0.004075485796751351
9.030899869919436       0.002338867490523633
9.542425094393248       0.0013498980316300957
10.0    0.0007827011290012744
10.413926851582252      0.0004555594385768573
10.79181246047625       0.00026600275256962515
11.139433523068368      0.0001557454883836921
11.46128035678238       9.140531649091767e-5
11.760912590556813      5.375558836475028e-5

",

So data being sent to Gnuplot is still ASCII.

Format of binary data to be sent to Gnuplot is described e.g. in http://www.gnuplot.info/docs_5.2/Gnuplot_5.2.pdf starting from p86, under "BINARY DATA FILES:".

I understand that it's easier to debug ASCII than binary, so sending binary data should not necessarily be instead of ASCII, but it can be an option - especially in the early versions if they are to be implemented.

Thank in advance.

[sergstesh]

And I forgot to mention that converting data from internal binary representation into ASCII in Julia interpreter also takes time.

[mbaz]

@sergstesh Thanks for the suggestion. It is a good idea, and you're likely correct that this will improve speed, especially for plots with lots of data. I will try to get this done for v1.1 (a PR would be very welcome, too!).

[sergstesh]

What is "PR" in this case ?

[mbaz]

@sergstesh A "pull request", meaning that you (or someone else) works on the code to implement this, and then requests me to "pull" their code into Gaston.jl. See https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/collaborating-with-issues-and-pull-requests/proposing-changes-to-your-work-with-pull-requests