gnuplot and gnuplot_x11

gnuplot 3.5 has been rebuilt with Fig 2.1 output format support compiled. This allows one to read in the output of a gnuplot plot into the xfig drawing program.

gnuplot 3.5 has been built for Digital Unix, Ultrix, SunOS, Solaris 2.5.1, HPUX, AIX and Irix 5.3. It can be found in /exp/rcf/share/bin/gnuplot. The "old" 3.5 version without Fig output capability can be found as gnuplot-old in the same directory.

What is 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 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.

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.

The new gnuplot user should begin by reading the general information available by typing `help` after running gnuplot. Then read about the `plot` command (type `help plot`).