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

Scripting gnuplot with Python


In this recipe, we turn to the scripting language Python. This high-level language is well suited to the interactive exploration of data and the rapid development of programs for its analysis. This facility is made even stronger by its extension library numpy, which adds a rich set of efficient, C-coded routines for manipulating numerical arrays. In addition, there are several ways to make plots directly from Python. In this recipe we introduce Python's gnuplot interface, gnuplot.py.

Getting ready

You will need an installation of Python and its numerical library numpy, which comes with several popular scientific Python packages. You also need gnuplot.py, which you also may already have if you are doing scientific work with Python. If not, you can download it from its official Sourceforge site at http://gnuplot-py.sourceforge.net/.

How to do it…

Run the following code by typing python file.py, substituting the name of the Python script for file (the included sample...