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

Adding a label with an arrow


Complex graphs can often benefit from information in addition to what can be provided in a title, in the axis labels, and a legend. Sometimes we need to explain the meaning of a particular feature on the graph. This can be done with labels and arrows.

How to do it…

Following is the complete script that you can feed to gnuplot to create the graph:

set term postscript landscape
set out 'fourier.ps'
set yrange [-1.5:1.5]
set xrange [0:6.3]
set ytics nomirror
set y2tics 0,.1
set y2range [0:1.2]
set style fill pattern 5
set key at graph .9, .9 spacing 3 font "Helvetica, 14"
set xlabel "Time (sec.)" font "Courier, 12"
set ylabel "Amplitude" font "Courier, 12"
set y2label "Error Magnitude" font "Courier, 12"
set title "Fourier Approximation to Square Wave" font "Times-Roman, 24"
set label "Approximation error" right at 2.4, 0.45 offset -.5, 0
set arrow 1 from first 2.4, 0.45 to 3, 0.93 lt 1 lw 2 front size .3, 15
plot 'ch2.dat' using 1:2:(sgn($2)) with filledcurves notitle...