Chapter 2. Essential gnuplot

This chapter covers

  • Invoking gnuplot
  • Plotting functions and data
  • Saving and exporting

In this chapter, we introduce gnuplot’s most important features: generating plots, saving them to a file, and exporting graphs to common graphics file formats. In the next chapter, we’ll talk about data transformations and the organization of data sets. By the end of the next chapter, you’ll know most of the commands you’ll use on a day-to-day basis.

Are you surprised that a couple of chapters are sufficient to get us this far? Congratulations, you just discovered why gnuplot is cool: it makes easy things easy, and hard things possible. This chapter and the next cover the easy parts; as to the hard parts... well, that’s what the ...

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