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+## Copyright (C) 2007 David Bateman
+##
+## This file is part of Octave.
+##
+## Octave is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
+## under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+## the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at
+## your option) any later version.
+##
+## Octave is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
+## WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+## MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
+## General Public License for more details.
+##
+## You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+## along with Octave; see the file COPYING.  If not, see
+## <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
+
+## Undocumented internal function.
+
+function retval = __axes_limits__ (fcn, varargin)
+  retval = [];
+  fcnmode = sprintf("%smode", fcn);
+
+  if (nargin > 1 && isscalar (varargin{1}) && ishandle (varargin{1}))
+    h = varargin {1};
+    off = 1;
+    if (! strcmp (get (h, "type"), "axes"))
+      error ("%s: expecting first argument to be an axes object", fcn);
+    endif
+  else
+    off = 0;
+    h = gca ();
+  endif
+
+  if (nargin == off + 1)
+    retval = get (h, fcn);
+  else
+    arg = varargin {off + 1};
+
+    if (ischar (arg))
+      arg = tolower (arg);
+      if (strcmp ("mode", arg))
+
+	retval = get (h, fcnmode);
+      elseif (strcmp ("auto", arg) ||  strcmp ("manual", arg))  
+	set (h, fcnmode, arg);
+      endif
+    else
+      if (!isnumeric (arg) && any (size(arg(:)) != [2, 1]))
+	error ("%s: argument must be a 2 element vector", fcn);
+      else
+	set (h, fcn, arg (:));
+      endif
+    endif
+  endif
+endfunction