Gnuplot 3.7

Gnuplot is a command-line driven interactive function plotting utility. 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. (The "GNU" in gnuplot is NOT related to the Free Software Foundation, the naming is just a coincidence.)

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.

Using the Software
To start a gnuplot session, at the system prompt type:

% gnuplot

Documentation
The new gnuplot user should begin by reading the general information offered within a gnuplot session by typing help.

A man page is also available for this product. At the system prompt type:

% man gnuplot

Technical Support
Help is available from UW Technology. Send a question to help@u.washington.edu if you need help with this software.

(software installed on 3/24/99)