Gnuplot in Action, Second Edition

Chapter 7. Decorations: labels, arrows, and explanations

This chapter covers

• Understanding layers and locations on a graph
• Adding arrows, labels, and other decorations
• Providing explanations using a key
• Changing a graph’s overall appearance

Data alone doesn’t tell a story. To be useful, the data needs to be placed in context: you must tell the observer what the data is (such as position versus time, particle count versus scattering angle, stock price versus date, and so on) and what units the data is plotted in (centimeters or inches, seconds or minutes, dollars or Euros). No plot is complete without this information.

But you can do much more to make a graph useful and informative: you can add arrows and annotations on the graph to point ...