gnuplot

Description
Where to Find gnuplot
gnuplot: Instructions
If You Still Need Help

Description

Gnuplot is a command-driven interactive function and data plotting program. The plots are x-y data plots with functions in 2D or x-y-z data plots with surfaces in 3D. The plots can be displayed on the screen for interactive graphical exploration, or the plots can be stored in file using many common graphical formats. This way the constructed graph can viewed, printed or saved to be included in a large document or web page.

This program has a long history, and the current version has been unchanged in over ten years. There have been new graphics formats supported, but the command files from 10 years ago will still work. The official web page is www.gnuplot.info which replaces the old www.gnuplot.org [1], which you will still find in the on-line and printed documentation.

[1]	the Gnuplot development team is working to get the old domain name back (Jan 2002)

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Where to Find gnuplot

Where Can I Use gnuplot on Campus?
Gnuplot is available on Strauss and Mahler in the standard path using the command gnuplot.

For availability of gnuplot at computing sites, please see the web pages at http://www.udel.edu/sites.
How Can I Obtain gnuplot for my Personal Computer?
The current version of Gnuplot is 3.7.1 and it is a sourceforge project - see sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot for MS Windows and X windows versions. For the Mac OS carbonized version see homepage.mac.com/gnuplot

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gnuplot Instructions

Running Gnuplot Interactively on Strauss or Mahler.

At the UNIX prompt (%) type

gnuplot

the following will appear to begin your command line session

        G N U P L O T
        Unix version 3.7
        patchlevel 1
        last modified Fri Oct 22 18:00:00 BST 1999

        Copyright(C) 1986 - 1993, 1998, 1999
        Thomas Williams, Colin Kelley and many others

        Type `help` to access the on-line reference manual
        The gnuplot FAQ is available from
        <http://www.ucc.ie/gnuplot/gnuplot-faq.html>

        Send comments and requests for help to <info-gnuplot@dartmouth.edu>
        Send bugs, suggestions and mods to <bug-gnuplot@dartmouth.edu>

If your see the Terminal type set to 'x11' then you are on an X windows device and you can see the the output for any plot command in a new window. For example the

plot sin(x)

command will produce a window with the the plot:

Sin Curve plot

To exit your gnuplot session type

quit

Making a plot to be displayed on a web page
To make a copy of your plot for a web page, change the output format to "png", set the name of the output file and type the plot command again (or simply replot to save the current picture).

set terminal png
set output 'fig.png'
plot sin(x)

Then the sin(x) plot in the fig.png file can be display using the Netscape browser as shown below:
Printing from Gnuplot
To print your plot, change the output format to "postscript", set the name of the output file to the print command and type the plot command again (or simply replot to print the current picture).

set terminal postscript
set output '|lpr'
plot sin(x)
1. Make sure you begin the command with the pipe symbol, |. If you do not, Gnuplot will save your postscript output in a file.
2. The lpr command will print to the printer you specified in your PRINTER environment variable or smips if you did not specify a printer.
on-line help
The Gnuplot on-line help is all text base. To get into the on-line help type the gnuplot command help. Make sure you watch the prompt. When you get back to the gnuplot> prompt you can continue and type more gnuplot commands.

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More Help

Since there is a wealth of experience with Gnuplot there are many gnuplot tutori also available on the web. Try searching the web with keywords:

If you need help quickly, you may call the IT Help Center at 831-6000 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Or, you can submit a question through e-mail.

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