Plotting with gnuplot for (GIX-) dummies

Under construction!!

gnuplot is a command-driven interactive function plotting program. With gnuplot you can make plots from our database quite easily...

To start gnuplot, type gnuplot. To quit it type exit, quit, q or Ctrl-D. You can give individual commands to gnuplot, but when plotting complicated plots it's better to write scripts and then run them with gnuplot. Write the script with any text editor, save it and run by typing load 'file.gnu' in gnuplot.

A good (?) example is the best way to learn the basics:

An example of a single plot
An example of 3X4 multiplot
A perl-script which produces a gnuplot-script in order to plot RATAN and other data
Instructions for plotting lightcurves

gnuplot needs two empty lines in between two data blocks eg to distinguish between two sources. For plotting the selection is made with the 'index' parameter of 'plot' command. Index starts from 0.
There are special functions for lightcurve plotting, see gnuplot documentation and Talvikki's instructions for details.
Some times the excecution of a script is aborted because of some errors in the script or the data. In this case the gnuplot won't accept the usual load command until you have turned off some features. Try set noterminal (?) to reset the terminal setting and get things working again.
For other anomalities think what kind of settings were left unreseted. Eg. set nomultiplot, set nolabel

Updated 040820/ilo