(www.cs.hmc.edu) Plotting Data with gnuplot
ROAM_REFS: https://www.cs.hmc.edu/~vrable/gnuplot/using-gnuplot.html
Guide on plotting data with Gnuplot.
- Plotting Data with gnuplot
This tutorial is intended as a supplement to the information contained on the Physics' Department website: Plotting and Fitting Data and Plotting Data with Kaleidagraph. It shows how to perform the same functions described in those tutorials using gnuplot, a command-line-driven plotting program commonly available on Unix machines (though available for other platforms as well). You may find it helpful to look at the other tutorials as well; this one is intended to follow them quite closely.
The instructions and samples given correspond to version 3.7 running under Linux, but the results should be similar everywhere. If you are using an older version, however, you might find a few of the more advanced features missing.
- Introduction
gnuplot seems almost the antithesis of Kaleidagraph: the the Kaleidagraph tutorial calls Kaleidagraph "an easy-to-use if somewhat limited graphics program". gnuplot is a not-quite-as-easy-to use, though extremely powerful, command-line plotting program.
Running gnuplot is easy: from a command prompt on any system, type
gnuplot. It is even possible to do this over a telnet or ssh connection, and preview the graphs in text mode! For best results, however, you should run gnuplot from within X Window, so that you can see better previews of your plots.