Gnuplot

Overview

Gnuplot is a program for plotting scientific data. The resulting figures can be of very high quality, provided that attention is paid to detail. Impressive examples can be found on the [gnuplot homepage]. This page does not provide a detailed manual for gnuplot, but instead focuses on specific aspects typically accounted in the CSML when creating figures for manuscripts.

PDF terminal

The version of gnuplot installed on all local machines has been compiled with [PDFlib], which makes it possible to directly produce PDF images. Such figures offer the important advantage that they are fully scalable and yet have a small file size. Choose this terminal via

set term pdf enh

Sometimes, fine-tuning of the resulting PDF figure is most conveniently done in Adobe Illustrator: each component of the figure will appear as an object that you can move, resize, etc.

General usage tips

• Journals typically prefer Helvetica as the typeface used in figures