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

Using European-style decimals [new]


Another new internationalization feature in gnuplot 4.4 is the ability to set the character used for the decimal point to be correct for the locale in use. In most European countries the comma is used, whereas in the U.S. the period is conventional.

How to do it…

The following script produces the graph that follows it:

set decimalsign locale "es_ES.utf8"
plot [0:1] x**3

Note that the periods used for decimal points that we've seen in all the examples until now have become commas, because gnuplot knows that that is the convention when using the Spanish language.

How it works…

The new command set decimalsign selects the correct decimal separator for the locale specified. We can also select any symbol here explicitly. If we would like a vertical bar to stand in for the decimal point, for example, we can say set decimalsign "|". These customizations only affect the output on the graph.

Tip

Changing the decimalsign does not change what gnuplot will be expecting when...