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

Arranging an array of plots


The simplest use of the multiplot mode creates a rectangular array of plots with regular spacing. The following figure is an example of this type of multiple plot:

In the previous figure, we have made a table of graphs showing the four kinds of Bessel function that gnuplot has built in.

How to do it…

Run this script through gnuplot to get the array of plots shown in the previous figure:

set multiplot layout 2, 2
plot besj0(x)
plot besj1(x)
plot besy0(x)
plot besy1(x)
unset multiplot

How it works…

The new command is in the first line of the recipe. The commands following that are simple plot statements, until we reach the final line. The initial command puts gnuplot into multiplot mode. If you are working interactively, you will see that the prompt, which is usually gnuplot>, has become multiplot> to remind you that you are in a special mode.

The layout 2, 2 part of the command sets up a regular array of plots with two columns and two rows; of course you can use...