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

Positioning graphs on the page [new]


A new feature of gnuplot 4.4 is the more consistent handling of the concepts of graph and canvas sizes. This allows more predictable positioning of graphs on the output page, or canvas.

How to do it…

The two pages shown in the previous figure were made with the following script:

unset key
set size .75,.75
set out 'file1'
plot sin(x)
set size .25,.25
set out 'file2'
plot sin(x)

How it works…

Here, in the highlighted code lines, we have set the sizes of the plots. The size runs from 0 to 1, where 1 is the usual default that fills the entire canvas with the graph. The figure shows the results as they would appear if printed out, on an actual piece of paper, in most terminals. A thick border is drawn to indicate the paper boundaries; we see that the plot is anchored to the lower left-hand side. The graph sizes are distinct from the size option given to the set term command that we discussed in the previous recipe, which generally determines the size of the canvas...