This is an archival copy of the Visualization Group's web page 1998 to 2017. For current information, please vist our group's new web page.

Gnuplot at NERSC

Availability Up-to-date information on which versions of VisIt are running on which NERSC platforms is available at: NERSC Visualization Software Applications.

Description
Gnuplot is a command-driven interactive function and data plotting program.
Features
Gnuplot is a command-driven interactive function plotting program. It can be used to plot functions and data points in both two- and three-dimensional plots in many different formats, and accommodates many of the needs of today's scientists for graphic data representation. Gnuplot is copyrighted, but freely distributable. Gnuplot's's web site contains general information, sample code, and links to other information such as a gnuplot FAQ, demos, documentation, etc.

Accessing Gnuplot
Some, but not all, NERSC platforms require the user to load gnuplot using the module command before calling the application.

Documentation
Links to local online documentation.

Additional Resources
Links to the Gnuplot distribution site, supplemental information, a FAQ page, emacs modes, and more.

Description

Gnuplot is a command-driven interactive function plotting program. It can be used to plot functions and data points in both two- and three-dimensional plots in many different formats.
Gnuplot is copyrighted, but it is free to use.

Features

Plotting of two-dimensional functions and data points in many different styles (points, lines, error bars).
Gnuplot plots any number of functions, built up of C operators, C library functions, and some things C doesn't have like **, sgn(), etc. There is also support for plotting data files, to compare actual data to theoretical curves.
Gnuplot can plot 2D and 3D data sets. Some of the plotting features include line charts, error bars, contour plots, polar charts, surface plots, etc.
Computations in integer, float and complex arithmetic.
Plotting of three-dimensional data points and surfaces in many different styles (contour plot, mesh).
Support for complex arithmetic.
User-defined functions.
Support for a large number of operating systems, graphics file formats and devices.
Extensive on-line help.
Labels for title, axes, data points.
Command line editing and history on most platforms.

Accessing Gnuplot

Check the NERSC Visualization Software Applications page to whether you need to load gnuplot using the module command. If the entry in the "Module" column of the table is "not needed", then you do not need to load gnuplot before using. In this case, just type gnuplot at the command line to run gnuplot.

If you are working on a NERSC platform that requires you to load gnuplot before running it,then type
```
  module load gnuplot
  gnuplot
```
to load and run gnuplot.

For help, type
```
  help
```
at the Gnuplot command prompt. After that, keep looking through the keywords. Good starting points are 'plot' and 'set', e.g.,
```
  help plot
```
Gnuplot has a rich set of demos, however, the location of the demo files on NERSC platforms varies from platform to platform. Demo scripts are available at http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/demo/. Click on one of the demo links to see the output from running gnuplot. The scripts, and links to the scripts, that produced the plots are to the left of the plots. If for example, you download the demo script, simple.dem, then you could view it in Gnuplot by typing
```
  load 'simple.dem'
```
at the Gnuplot command prompt.

Documentation

Emacs Modes For Gnuplot (unsupported)

Additional Resources

The Gnuplot home page has links to documentation, tutorials, and a lot more information about Gnuplot.
The Gnuplot FAQ
Demo scripts
GNUPLOT 4.0 - A Brief Manual and Tutorial by Henri Gavin
Probably the most comprehensive Gnuplot links page out there: Bernhard Reiter: Gnuplot - Scientific Plotting
A Bourne shell based gnuplot frontend by Michael Sternberg
The Qplot package to plot quarterly time data
A perl script to create filled boxes with the postscript terminal, by Andreas Widmann. The script draws boxed keys, and fills (and outlines) boxes by post-processing Gnuplot postscript output. This is new in comparison to the patches of Steve Cumming and Bernhard Reiter since it works for postscript output (Steve Cummings patch only works well only on non-vector oriented terminals) and you don't have to go through fig which implies some heavy restrictions
Precompiled Gnuplot packages for Solaris only can be found at http://www.sunfreeware.com/
A simple Visual Basic interface to Gnuplot at http://vbgnuplot.freeservers.com/
A reader-maintained on-line resource for discussing and learning about Gnuplot at http://gnuplot.sciwikis.org/
Newsgroup: ~comp.graphics.apps.gnuplot.
Visualization Group's description of graphics/visualization software support at NERSC
List of NERSC platforms and version numbers for visualization applications and for graphics applications (primarily NCAR)

This is an archival copy of the Visualization Group's web page 1998 to 2017. For current information, please vist our group's new web page.

Gnuplot at NERSC

Table of Contents

Description

Features

Accessing Gnuplot

Documentation

Documentation

Emacs Modes For Gnuplot (unsupported)

Additional Resources