Book Image

gnuplot Cookbook

By : Lee Phillips
Book Image

gnuplot Cookbook

By: Lee Phillips

Overview of this book

gnuplot is the world's finest technical plotting software, used by scientists, engineers, and others for many years. It is in constant development and runs on practically every operating system, and can produce output in almost any format. The quality of its 3d plots is unmatched and its ability to be incorporated into computer programs and document preparation systems is excellent. gnuplot Cookbook ñ it will help you master gnuplot. Start using gnuplot immediately to solve your problems in data analysis and presentation. Quickly find a visual example of the graph you want to make and see a complete, working script for producing it. Learn how to use the new features in gnuplot 4.4. Find clearly explained, working examples of using gnuplot with LaTeX and with your own computer programming language. You will master all the ins and outs of gnuplot through gnuplot Cookbook. You will learn to plot basic 2d to complex 3d plots, annotate from simple labels to equations, integrate from simple scripts to full documents and computer progams. You will be taught to annotate graphs with equations and symbols that match the style of the rest of your text, thus creating a seamless, professional document. You will be guided to create a web page with an interactive graph, and add graphical output to your simulation or numerical analysis program. Start using all of gnuplot's simple to complex features to suit your needs, without studying its 200 page manual through this Cookbook.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
gnuplot Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Finding Help and Information
Index

Plotting points with curves


In addition to the two main styles we have encountered for the plotting of 2D data or functions—namely a curve or a series of markers—gnuplot offers a third style consisting of a curve overlaid with markers. This style is useful in plotting tabulated data, where different marker styles can be used to distinguish between different data sets and the smooth line connecting them serves to guide the eye. The linespoints style is also favored by some even when plotting mathematical functions, where different marker styles are used to indicate the function being plotted rather than different line types (dot and dash patterns).

The next recipe shows in detail how to select these various marker styles; here we introduce the use of the linespoints plotting style.

How to do it…

The following command creates the previous figure:

plot sin(x)/x with linespoints ps 2 pt 6

How it works…

We select the linespoints style with the phrase with linespoints. The expression ps 2 selects a...