Gnuplot
Gnuplot is a command-line driven interactive function plotting utility
for UNIX, MSDOS, and VMS platforms. The software is copyrighted but
freely distributed (i.e., you don't have to pay for it). It was
originally intended as a graphical program which would allow scientists
and students to visualize mathematical functions and data. Gnuplot
supports many different types of terminals, plotters, and printers
(including many color devices, and pseudo-devices like LaTeX) and is
easily extensible to include new devices. [ The "GNU" in gnuplot is
NOT related to the Free Software Foundation, the naming is just a
coincidence (and a long story). Thus gnuplot is not covered by the Gnu
copyleft, but rather by its own copyright statement, included in all
source code files.]
Gnuplot handles both curves (2 dimensions) and surfaces (3
dimensions). Surfaces can be plotted as a mesh fitting the specified
function, floating in the 3-d coordinate space, or as a contour plot
on the x-y plane. For 2-d plots, there are also many plot styles,
including lines, points, lines with points, error bars, and impulses
(crude bar graphs). Graphs may be labeled with arbitrary labels and
arrows, axes labels, a title, date and time, and a key. The interface
includes command-line editing and history on most platforms.
Some of the basic documents have been converted to hypertext.
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The gnuplot pages are maintained by Alexander Woo
If you have comments or suggestions then
send comments to:
woo@playfair.stanford.edu