gnuplot documentation

70 SET-SHOW gnuplot 4.3 115
Any labels or arrows that have been defined will be drawn for each plot according to the current size
and origin (unless their coordinates are defined in the screen system). Just about everything else that
can be set is applied to each plot, too. If you want something to appear only once on the page, for
instance a single time stamp, you’ll need to put a set time/unset time pair around one of the plot,
splot or replot commands within the set multiplot/unset multiplot block.
The multiplot title is separate from the individual plot titles, if any. Space is reserved for it at the top
of the page, spanning the full width of the canvas.
The commands set origin and set size must be used to correctly position each plot if no layout is
specified or if fine tuning is desired. See set origin (p. 117) and set size (p. 129) for details of their
usage.
Example:
set multiplot
set size 0.4,0.4
set origin 0.1,0.1
plot sin(x)
set size 0.2,0.2
set origin 0.5,0.5
plot cos(x)
unset multiplot
This displays a plot of cos(x) stacked above a plot of sin(x).
set size and set origin refer to the entire plotting area used for each plot. Please also see set term
size (p. 19). If you want to have the axes themselves line up, you can guarantee that the margins are
the same size with the set margin commands. See set margin (p. 112) for their use. Note that the
margin settings are absolute, in character units, so the appearance of the graph in the remaining space
will depend on the screen size of the display device, e.g., perhaps quite different on a video display and
a printer.
With the layout option you can generate simple multiplots without having to give the set size and set
origin commands before each plot: Those are generated automatically, but can be overridden at any
time. With layout the display will be divided by a grid with rows and columns. This
grid is filled rows first or columns first depending on whether the corresponding option is given in the
multiplot command. The stack of plots can grow downwards or upwards. Default is rowsfirst and
downwards.
Each plot can be scaled by scale and shifted with offset; if the y-values for scale or offset are omitted,
the x-value will be used. unset multiplot will turn off the automatic layout and restore the values of
set size and set origin as they were before set multiplot layout.
Example:
set size 1,1
set origin 0,0
set multiplot layout 3,2 columnsfirst scale 1.1,0.9
[ up to 6 plot commands here ]
unset multiplot
The above example will produce 6 plots in 2 columns filled top to bottom, left to right. Each plot will
have a horizontal size of 1.1/2 and a vertical size of 0.9/3.
See also
multiplot demo (multiplt.dem)
70.39 Mx2tics
Minor tic marks along the x2 (top) axis are controlled by set mx2tics. Please see set mxtics (p. 116).