gnuplot documentation

70 SET-SHOW gnuplot 4.3 117
70.44 Offsets
Offsets provide a mechanism to put a boundary around the data inside of an autoscaled graph.
Syntax:
set offsets , , ,
unset offsets
show offsets
Each offset may be a constant or an expression. Each defaults to 0. Left and right offsets are given in
units of the x axis, top and bottom offsets in units of the y axis. A positive offset expands the graph in
the specified direction, e.g., a positive bottom offset makes ymin more negative. Negative offsets, while
permitted, can have unexpected interactions with autoscaling and clipping.
Offsets are ignored in splots.
Example:
set offsets 0, 0, 2, 2
plot sin(x)
This graph of sin(x) will have a y range [-3:3] because the function will be autoscaled to [-1:1] and the
vertical offsets are each two.
70.45 Origin
The set origin command is used to specify the origin of a plotting surface (i.e., the graph and its
margins) on the screen. The coordinates are given in the screen coordinate system (see coordinates
(p. 24) for information about this system).
Syntax:
set origin ,
70.46 Output
By default, screens are displayed to the standard output.
display to the specified file or device.
Syntax:
set output {""}
show output
The set output command redirects the
The filename must be enclosed in quotes. If the filename is omitted, any output file opened by a
previous invocation of set output will be closed and new output will be sent to STDOUT. (If you give
the command set output "STDOUT", your output may be sent to a file named "STDOUT"! ["May
be", not "will be", because some terminals, like x11 or wxt, ignore set output.])
MSDOS users should note that the \ character has special significance in double-quoted strings, so
single-quotes should be used for filenames in different directories.
When both set terminal and set output are used together, it is safest to give set terminal first,
because some terminals set a flag which is needed in some operating systems. This would be the case,
for example, if the operating system needs to know whether or not a file is to be formatted in order to
open it properly.
On machines with popen functions (Unix), output can be piped through a shell command if the first
non-whitespace character of the filename is ’|’. For instance,
set output "|lpr -Plaser filename"
set output "|lp -dlaser filename"
On MSDOS machines, set output "PRN" will direct the output to the default printer. On VMS,
output can be sent directly to any spooled device. It is also possible to send the output to DECnet
transparent tasks, which allows some flexibility.