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

Sharing with Plotshare


This section will explain how to get graphs from gnuplot even if you don't have gnuplot installed.

How to do it…

Go to http://www.plotshare.com/. You will find a web page with a box near the top. Enter a gnuplot script in the box and click the execute button, and you will get the same result as if you had run the script through gnuplot on your own machine. You can even upload datafiles to be saved on the server and plotted.

In addition to providing graphing services, this website is designed so you can share your gnuplot scripts with others and work on them collaboratively. You can click on the recent tab to see the scripts and resulting output submitted by other users, which can be a fun and interesting way to learn about the program.

The previous screenshot shows what the recent section of the Plotshare website looks like.

How it works…

Because gnuplot is a C program with the ability to use the filesystem, execute system commands, and do other powerful and dangerous things...