Difference between revisions of "Gnuplot"
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** [http://theory.kitp.ucsb.edu/~paxton/tioga.html Tioga] - creating figures and plots using Ruby, PDF, and TeX | ** [http://theory.kitp.ucsb.edu/~paxton/tioga.html Tioga] - creating figures and plots using Ruby, PDF, and TeX | ||
** [http://comp.uark.edu/~luecking/tex/mfpic.html mfpic] - a scheme for producing pictures from LaTeX commands. The LaTeX commands generate a input file to be processed by Metapost. | ** [http://comp.uark.edu/~luecking/tex/mfpic.html mfpic] - a scheme for producing pictures from LaTeX commands. The LaTeX commands generate a input file to be processed by Metapost. | ||
+ | ** [http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net matplotlib] - a Matlab-inspired Python based plotting tool which incorporates many features, including the use of TeX in labels, titles etc. | ||
=== Other links === | === Other links === |
Revision as of 01:14, 9 February 2007
http://www.gnuplot.info/figs/title2.png
Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven utility for function plotting for many platforms.
All the examples on this page talk about how the things are supposed to work once the new terminal is uploaded. The code described doesn't work yet unless you download new files from the darcs repository (see below).}}
Contents
Minimal Example
\usemodule[gnuplot] % write a script for gnuplot \startGNUPLOTscript{sin} plot sin(x) \stopGNUPLOTscript % include the resulting graphic into the document \useGNUPLOTgraphic[sin]
Calling gnuplot to create the graphic and postprocessing should happen automatically.
Requirements
- recent version of ConTeXt and texmfstart in your PATH
- Gnuplot module (on MikTeX it's part of the distribution already)
- Gnuplot has to be installed (and in your PATH)
- On most Linux installations this is probably already the case. On Windows you have to create a file
gnuplot.bat
with something like:
"C:\Program Files\gnuplot\wgnupl32.exe" %*
and put that file to a "visible place" (has to be found in PATH).
- if you want to use the ConTeXt terminal (default), you need modified binaries until they officially become part of gnuplot
- if you want to try it on Linux, you have to download the source from http://www.gnuplot.info, add context.trm, fix the file
term.h
and compile it. - For windows version of binary or if you have problems compiling it, please mail me to <mojca.miklavec.lists(at)gmail.com>
- if you want to try it on Linux, you have to download the source from http://www.gnuplot.info, add context.trm, fix the file
- write18 has to be enabled
The module has some strange problems when used on MikTeX (memory limit exceeded or something similar). I'll try to figure out what exactly is going on. --Mojca
Terminals
Gnuplot support output in different formats with, for example
set terminal mp color solid
will output a metapost document with colors and without dashed lines. After some appropriate preprocessing (with MPtoDF for this particular case) this file can be included in PDF documents.
You can specify the terminal with
\setupGNUPLOT[terminal=mp,options=color solid]
terminal=
is mandatory since that't the only way to tell ConTeXt how to preprocess the file.options=
is optional and is appended to the end ofset terminal [terminal name]
. You can also override it by saying
\startGNUPLOTinclusions set terminal mp color solid \stopGNUPLOTinclusions
But you have to be careful that you don't set any other terminal with output=
then.
Currently supported terminals are:
- mp/metapost: most beautiful results, uses MPtoPDF to convert images to pdf, but the context terminal should replace it
- ps/postscript: most advanced in the number of supported features
- png: outputs bitmap images (no preprocessing needed)
- pdf: outputs PDF directly (no preprocessing needed), but is usually not available in most binaries of gnuplot
- context: new
More complex example with MetaPost or ConTeXt terminal
Metapost produces the plots of a relatively high quality. You can use TeX commands to format the title, label axes and legend.
\usemodule[gnuplot] % output may be "mp/metapost", "ps/postscript", "pdf" or "png"; ps is currently the default \setupGNUPLOT[terminal=mp,option=color] % general settings for the whole document \startGNUPLOTinclusions # you may use TeX commands to format the titles and axes set title '\bf Trigonometry' set xlabel '$x$' set ylabel '$y$' # to prevent uneven numbering: will result in # (0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, ...) instead of # (0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, ...) set format y '\%.1f' \stopGNUPLOTinclusions \startGNUPLOTscript{tan} plot tan(x) t '$\tan(x)$' \stopGNUPLOTscript \startGNUPLOTscript{sin} plot 4*sin(x)+x t '$4\sin(x)+x$', x t '$x$' lt 3 \stopGNUPLOTscript \useGNUPLOTgraphic[tan] \useGNUPLOTgraphic[sin][width=10cm]
There's only one problem that you have to be careful about: MetaPost terminal uses cmr
fonts for labels. If you have the stand-alone distributions, you either have to install them by yourself or to play with set terminal mp {fontname}
a bit (http://www.gnuplot.info/docs/gnuplot.html#mp).
More complex example: Multiple terminals
You can use different terminals for plotting the same function.
TODO: an example, similar to the one in m-gnuplot.tex, some images to get a visual impression of the main differences in terminals (See: To-Do List) |
Development
- darcs repository (maintained by Renaud Aubin)
- mailing list
History
I (Mojca Miklavec) probably mentioned long time ago that I would like to have (or write?) support for Gnuplot inside ConTeXt, but I had no knowledge to do that. Peter Münster posted the very first module for gnuplut support on the mailing list [1], but that version only worked with bash. In the days to follow Hans Hagen has written a new module (based on my numerous "possible and impossible" requests) and Taco additionally provided some bugfixes and minor changes.
The module provides an option to select the most appropriate/suitable driver according to the user's choice (metapost, png, pdf, postscript were the firs ones to be supported). Hans was wondering why there was no context terminal. I took over it's development, the code is almost finished by now, but I guess that Hans now regrets that question already.
He had to invest quite some time into fixing buggy inclusion of text into graphics using textext
(if nothing else, he had to read and reply to all the mails [complaints] that me and Taco sent him), just to lead to the conclusion that textext
was useless for graphics produced by Gnuplot: too slow and TeX ran out of memory after 10 minutes while processing approximately the 13th plot. After that the new marvellous \sometxt
command was born.
I'm currently sticking tiny pieces together in the way I want the module to work. Hans could probably finish the same work that costs me a few days in a few minutes, but after dropping me a bone, he decided to leave me the joy of diving into ConTeXt internals and to let me figure out how to program in ConTeXt by myself. So I still keep spamming the mailing list with numerous questions and both Taco and Hans - without whom implementing the module would be impossible - keep answering.
Alternatives for Function Plotting
- in MetaPost
- m-graph Module (see Drawing Graphs with MetaPost by John D. Hobby)
- functions in MetaFun, see metafun-s.pdf, section 9.3
- others
- PyX - graph drawing through python interface with TeX typesetting & PostScript capabilities
- Tioga - creating figures and plots using Ruby, PDF, and TeX
- mfpic - a scheme for producing pictures from LaTeX commands. The LaTeX commands generate a input file to be processed by Metapost.
- matplotlib - a Matlab-inspired Python based plotting tool which incorporates many features, including the use of TeX in labels, titles etc.
Other links
- exceltex - an interesting LaTeX package to get data from Excel into LaTeX