Chapter 10. Terminals and output formats
This chapter covers
- Understanding terminals
- Font selection and enhanced text mode
- Standard graphics file formats
- Mathematical formulas with gnuplot and LaTeX
- Interactive terminals
Gnuplot can generate graphs in all common graphics formats (and some uncommon ones, too). The components within gnuplot that are ultimately responsible for creating all graphical output are called terminals. Different output formats require different terminals.
Because terminals are the final step in the creation of a graph, the ultimate appearance of a graph depends directly on the capabilities of the terminal used to generate it. Some of gnuplot’s terminals produce output of very high quality and are among gnuplot’s primary assets. Unfortunately, terminal handling in gnuplot is a bit different than comparable functionality in other programs. We’ll therefore begin our discussion of terminals with a brief historical digression that explains the motivation behind gnuplot’s terminal abstraction.
An important capability that is provided by each terminal is the handling of fonts or typefaces: the selection of fonts and the available effects (italics, boldface, sub- and superscript) are determined by the choice of terminal. So, we’ll discuss fonts and related topics in this chapter as well.