Gnuplot in Action, Second Edition

Chapter 2. Tutorial: essential gnuplot

This chapter covers

• Invoking gnuplot
• Plotting functions and data
• Saving and exporting
• Managing options
• Getting help

This chapter introduces gnuplot’s most important features: generating plots, saving them to a file, and exporting graphs to common graphics file formats. I’ll also explain briefly how to set options and how to access gnuplot’s built-in documentation. This chapter covers those commands that you’ll find yourself using almost every time you start up gnuplot. In the next couple of chapters, you’ll learn about further features for graphical analysis and how to manage data sets and files. By the end of chapter 4, you’ll know most of the commands you’ll use on a day-to-day basis.

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