gnuplot general

• Installing gnuplot

                  apt-get install gnuplot
                  apt-get install gnuplot-x11

• Specify offset for axis labels

                  set xlabel "x" offset *,*
                  set ylabel "y" offset *,*

• Logarithmic scale setting and formatting of axis labels

                  set logscale x
                  set format x "$10^{%L}$"

• Set axis labels to display powers

                  set format x "$%.0t \\times 10^{%T}$"

• Output in gnuplot epslatex

                  set terminal epslatex color 12(font size)
                  set output "graph.eps"

  After drawing a graph, if you do not specify output as an alias immediately, the legend display of eps will be incorrect, or a compilation error will occur in the first place.

• Creating a clean eps file with gnuplot's epslatex

  If you just want to paste in LaTeX text, that's fine, but if you want to create a file with text in it

                  \documentclass[12pt]{article}
                  \usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}
                  \pagestyle{empty}
                    
                  \begin{document}
                  \input{graph.tex}
                  \end{document}

  Compile the LaTeX file with the image pasted in with

                  dvips -E -o figure.eps figure.dvi

  As the margins are rather large as it is, minimize them using epstool (the standalone class is not so useful).

                  epstool --copy --bbox figure.eps dammy
                  mv dammy figure.eps

  If you script it for ubuntu, it looks like this

                  #!/bin/sh
                  gnuplot $1.gp
                  echo '\\documentclass[12pt]{article}' > figure.tex
                  echo '\\usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}' >> figure.tex
                  echo '\\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb}' >> figure.tex
                  echo '\\pagestyle{empty}' >> figure.tex
                  echo '\\begin{document}' >> figure.tex
                  echo '\\input{graph.tex}' >> figure.tex
                  echo '\\end{document}' >> figure.tex
                  latex figure.tex
                  dvips -E -o figure.eps figure.dvi
                  epstool --copy --bbox figure.eps dammy
                  mv dammy $1.eps
                  rm graph.tex
                  rm graph.eps
                  rm figure*

  but at the beginning of gp file

                  set terminal epslatex color 12
                  set output "graph.tex"

  must be put. However, epstool can be buggy and produce a very strange BoundingBox (we have seen this happen when using set size square in combination with unset ytics).In this case, instead of using epstool, you can use

                  eps2eps figure.eps dammy

  and set the BoundingBox in dammy to the original figure.eps. If you want to make it a script

                  #!/bin/sh
                  gnuplot $1.gp
                  echo '\\documentclass[12pt]{article}' > figure.tex
                  echo '\\usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}' >> figure.tex
                  echo '\\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb}' >> figure.tex
                  echo '\\pagestyle{empty}' >> figure.tex
                  echo '\\begin{document}' >> figure.tex
                  echo '\\input{graph.tex}' >> figure.tex
                  echo '\\end{document}' >> figure.tex
                  latex figure.tex
                  dvips -E -o figure.eps figure.dvi
                  eps2eps figure.eps dammy
                  DAM=`sed -n '2,2p' dammy`
                  sed -i "5c$DAM" figure.eps
                  mv figure.eps $1.eps
                  rm dammy
                  rm graph.tex
                  rm graph.eps
                  rm figure*

• Displaying graphs in ASCII art in gnuplot

                  set terminal dumb

• How to use every in gnuplot

                  every line skip:block skip:initial line:initial block:end line:end block

• plot a range

                  plot [a:b] f(x)

  is not very useful because it behaves strangely when it conflicts with set xrange. We can use the ternary operator something like that here

                  plot ((x-a)*(x-b) < 0 ? f(x) : 1/0)

• Function plot with Mathematica-like appearance

  See here (Jpn)

• Making histograms from list data only

  I thought gnuplot would not make histograms from list data unlike paid graphing software such as Kaleida graph, but this was not the case.
  See here (Jpn)

• Combine multiple files into one plot

                  plot "< paste file1.dat file2.dat" using 1:($2/$4)

• Drawing a line segment線分を引く

                  set arrow from *,* to *,* nohead lc * lw *

• Draw a point

                  set label 1 point ps * pt * lc * at *,*

  When drawing a line or point with splot, also attach front.

• Built-in function atan2(y,x)=atan(y/x)

  Note that it is not atan2(x,y) (same as fortran, opposite to Mathematica)