gnuplot documentation

70 SET-SHOW gnuplot 4.3 143
Ranges may also be specified on the plot command line. A range given on the plot line will be used for
that single plot command; a range given by a set command will be used for all subsequent plots that
do not specify their own ranges. The same holds true for splot.
Examples:
To set the xrange to the default:
set xrange [-10:10]
To set the yrange to increase downwards:
set yrange [10:-10]
To change zmax to 10 without affecting zmin (which may still be autoscaled):
set zrange [:10]
To autoscale xmin while leaving xmax unchanged:
set xrange [*:]
70.89 Xtics
Fine control of the major (labelled) tics on the x axis is possible with the set xtics command. The tics
may be turned off with the unset xtics command, and may be turned on (the default state) with set
xtics. Similar commands control the major tics on the y, z, x2 and y2 axes.
Syntax:
set xtics {axis | border} {{no}mirror}
{in | out} {scale {default | {,}}}
{{no}rotate {by }} {offset | nooffset}
{add}
{ autofreq
|
| , {,}
| ({""} {} {,{""}...) }
{ font "name{,}" }
{ textcolor }
unset xtics
show xtics
The same syntax applies to ytics, ztics, x2tics, y2tics and cbtics.
axis or border tells gnuplot to put the tics (both the tics themselves and the accompanying labels)
along the axis or the border, respectively. If the axis is very close to the border, the axis option will
move the tic labels to outside the border. The relevant margin settings will usually be sized badly by
the automatic layout algorithm in this case.
mirror tells gnuplot to put unlabelled tics at the same positions on the opposite border. nomirror
does what you think it does.
in and out change the tic marks to be drawn inwards or outwards.
With scale, the size of the tic marks can be adjusted. If is not specified, it is 0.5*.
The default size 1.0 for major tics and 0.5 for minor tics is requested by scale default.
rotate asks gnuplot to rotate the text through 90 degrees, which will be done if the terminal driver
in use supports text rotation. norotate cancels this. rotate by asks for rotation by
degrees, supported by some terminal types.
The defaults are border mirror norotate for tics on the x and y axes, and border nomirror norotate
for tics on the x2 and y2 axes. For the z axis, the {axis | border} option is not available and the
default is nomirror. If you do want to mirror the z-axis tics, you might want to create a bit more room
for them with set border.