About this Book
This book is intended to be a comprehensive introduction to gnuplot: from the basics to the power features and beyond. In addition to providing a tutorial on gnuplot itself, it demonstrates how to apply and use gnuplot to extract insight from data.
The gnuplot program has always had complete and detailed reference documentation, but what was often missing was a continuous presentation that tied all the different bits and pieces of gnuplot together and demonstrated how to use them to achieve certain tasks. This book attempts to fill that gap. It should also serve as a handy reference for more advanced gnuplot users and as an introduction to graphical ways of knowledge discovery.
And finally, this book tries to show you how to use gnuplot to achieve some surprisingly nifty effects that will make everyone say, “How did you do that?”
This book is divided into four parts. Part 1 consists of chapters 1 through 3 and is intended as a tutorial introduction to get you started with gnuplot. These three chapters cover all the truly essential material so that by the end of chapter 3, you should be able to handle most basic plotting tasks in gnuplot.