henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (08/01/84)
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