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Ok, I know this question might sound silly, but I cannot find out why the demo from the gnuplot official website (you can see an example on the left hand side in the picture below) looks different (and much nicer) than what I get from running the same demo on my machine (on a wxt terminal).

Is there a configuration file (something like a ~/.gnuplotrc) where a theme has been specified? If so, does anyone know what theme has been used here?

Here you have an image where you can compare the website and the locally-made versions

Demo from website and locally-made comparison

Moreover, just an off topic curiosity, is anyone using gnuplot seriously, or it's basically used to plot simple batch plots and for Octave?

Atcold
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5 Answers5

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It is very likely that the person who made the demo (likely Ethan Merritt) has defined his/her own set of default line colors, which are reflected in the demo images. You can do this yourself (see help set linetype). Example from gnuplot e-mail list:

# Ethan A Merritt - my preference for gnuplot colors
 # 2 3 4 5 6 8 are borrowed from the colors_podo set
 #
 set linetype  1 lc rgb "dark-violet" lw 1
 set linetype  2 lc rgb "#009e73" lw 1
 set linetype  3 lc rgb "#56b4e9" lw 1
 set linetype  4 lc rgb "#e69f00" lw 1
 set linetype  5 lc rgb "#f0e442" lw 1
 set linetype  6 lc rgb "#0072b2" lw 1
 set linetype  7 lc rgb "#e51e10" lw 1
 set linetype  8 lc rgb "black"   lw 1
 set linetype  9 lc rgb "gray50"  lw 1
 set linetype cycle  9

There are no built-in gnuplot themes, only sets of settings which change colors.

And yes, I do use gnuplot seriously! I use it both for simple plotting and for scientific publication.

andyras
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  • Cool! Is there a place where nice-looking *colour sets* are collected? (What do you use?) So far I've been using *Matlab* quite extensively for *graphic analysis*, so why prefer this free, light and open source program? Just for batch plotting? – Atcold Jun 16 '13 at 00:15
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    I recommend this publication (http://www.sandia.gov/~kmorel/documents/ColorMaps/ColorMapsExpanded.pdf) for some useful hints on color schemes. I don't know of another place where gnuplot-specific color schemes are collected, though. As for why gnuplot, I like all the features you mention--that it is free, it is very light (especially compared to a suite like Matlab) and it is open-source so I can see what is going on. Matlab is certainly more powerful and extensible than gnuplot, but for getting a quick look at data on the command line there is nothing better; it makes pretty figures too. – andyras Jun 16 '13 at 15:19
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    I've also used gnuplot for scientific publication. As I've grown more and more a part of the python community, lately I've been exploring matplotlib a little more seriously. I still dislike the backwards API in matplotlib, but it does make pretty decent plots. The biggest advantage is being able to analyze the data and plot it at the same time. That said, I still find myself wanting some feature that is really easy in gnuplot but hard in matplotlib from time to time. – mgilson Jun 16 '13 at 19:11
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There are nice palettes available at https://github.com/Gnuplotting/gnuplot-palettes and https://github.com/aschn/gnuplot-colorbrewer

These define line styles that you can use explicitly, but with some shell escaping tricks you can make them override the default linetypes, with something like this in your .gnuplot:

palettefile(n) = sprintf("<sed 's/set style line/set linetype/' /path/to/gnuplot-gnuplot-palettes/%s.pal", n)
load palettefile("rdbu")

You can then call load palettefile(palettename) (where palettename is one of the ones available in the palette repository) whenever you want to change the default palette, so gets quite close to the theming notion mentioned above.

Len Trigg
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  • I knew the website *Gnuplotting*, but I didn't have a clue there was a *GitHub* repo coming with it! Cheers! – Atcold Jul 28 '15 at 18:55
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It looks like you are using an older version - the demos are probably made with version 5, which has a new default palette. Your colors look like version 4 or below.

The new version has a lot of new, more powerful features. The new cariolatex terminal can produce really nice publication quality plots out of the box, or with very few tweaks.

emptypenny
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  • No, I was not. I was using the most updated version at the time. And, AFIK, *gnuplot* does not ship with a new colour scheme. – Atcold Sep 27 '15 at 22:16
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The most recent versions of gnuplot (5) have the left hand colour palette by default (at least the wxt terminal). They mention it helps readers with colour blindness.

I suggest you type in: help set colorsequence.

p.s. I also use gnuplot always for all my scientific publications.

Sebastian.Sanchez
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    I see. Anyhow it's not GNUplot, but gnuplot, and stands for an alternative to newplot, which was already taken. It is not related to the GNU project. – Atcold Jun 02 '17 at 17:40
  • Yes, I meant gnuplot. I could tell from your screenshot that we're using the same program. Whether its GNU related or not. I have no clue ;) – Sebastian.Sanchez Jun 03 '17 at 18:16
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    For posterity, it's not; the "gnu" was a pun on "NewPlot", which the original developers used as one of the bases for their design, not an indication of GNU affiliation. – underscore_d Feb 07 '18 at 16:59
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Although the result is similar to that of andyras, here is another solution: as the default colours depend on the terminal type, switch to the desired terminal type with set term and then type

show linetype
guebe
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