contour labelling [was "Re: [R] image ()"]

On Fri, 4 Dec 1998, Ross Ihaka wrote:

I have a paid ``volunteer'' who started work yesterday.  His job will
include upgrading contour, image, persp etc.  In addition I hope that
he will also add some mapping facilities along the lines of GMT (using
their shoreline database).

  Great!

Now would be a good time to make suggestions about desirable features.

  - ability to save and re-plot contours (e.g., for doing contours with
annotation, or selecting different pieces of a contour "object")

  - a good way to save the state of the last perspective used (in S-PLUS
3.3 and earlier you have to keep a "perspective" object around and pass it
with every call

  - flexible ways of specifying 3-D objects to add to a perspective plot,
grids for back and sides of plot space, etc.

  I always found the S-PLUS 3-D plotting routines klugey and fragile (for
example, you had to play around a lot with margins a lot in non-obvious
ways just to get things to show up on the plot) and it would/will be
lovely to have open, robust 3-D plotting primitives.