This is gnuplot version 6 -- binary distribution for Windows =========================================================================== gnuplot is a command-line driven interactive function plotting utility for Linux, OSX, Windows, VMS, and many other platforms. The software is copyrighted but freely distributed (i.e., you don't have to pay for it). It was originally intended as graphical program to allow scientists and students to visualize mathematical functions and data. gnuplot handles both curves (2 dimensions) and surfaces (3 dimensions). Surfaces can be plotted as a mesh fitting the specified function, floating in the 3-d coordinate space, or as a contour plot on the x-y plane. For 2-d plots, there are also many plot styles including lines, points, boxes, heat maps, stacked histograms, and contoured projections of 3D data. Graphs may be labeled with arbitrary labels and arrows, axis labels, a title, date and time, and a key. Getting started --------------- The new gnuplot user should begin by reading the general information available by typing `help` after running gnuplot. Then read about the `plot` command (type `help plot`). The manual for gnuplot (which is a nicely formatted version of the on-line help information) is available as a PDF document. You can find loads of test and sample scripts in the 'demo' directory. Try executing `test` and `load "all.dem"` or have a look at the online version of the demos at http://www.gnuplot.info/screenshots/index.html#demos License ------- See the Copyright file for copyright conditions. The "GNU" in gnuplot is NOT related to the Free Software Foundation, the naming is just a coincidence (and a long story; see the gnuplot FAQ for details). Thus gnuplot is not covered by the GPL (GNU Public License) copyleft, but rather by its own copyright statement, included in all source code files. However, some of the associated drivers and support utilities are dual-licensed. gnuplot binaries ---------------- * wgnuplot.exe: GUI version and the default gnuplot executable. As of version 5 it emulates pipe functionality. * wgnuplot_pipes.exe: Variant with full pipe functionality at the expense of an additional console window. * gnuplot.exe: Text (console) mode version of the gnuplot executable with full pipe functionality as it is common on other platforms. In contrast to wgnuplot.exe, this program can also accept commands on stdin (standard input) and print messages on stdout (standard output). It replaces pgnuplot.exe and is recommended to be used with 3rd party applications using gnuplot as graph engine, like e.g. Octave (www.octave.org). * pgnuplot.exe: This helper program is no longer shipped with binary package. Use gnuplot.exe instead. * runtime library files Runtime library files (e.g. libfreetype-6.dll) that are required for gnuplot are included in the package. Licenses of these runtime libraries can be found in the 'license' directory. Interactive Terminals --------------------- gnuplot on Windows offers three different interactive terminal types: windows, wxt, and qt. The later two are also available on other platforms. All three produce high quality output using antialiasing and oversampling with hinting and support all modern gnuplot features. Differences can be found in the export formats available for saving and clipboard, printing support and the behaviour in persist mode. Also wxt uses the same drawing code as the pngcairo and pdfcairo terminals, which allows for non-interactive saving of graphs. The windows terminal's graph windows can be docked to the wgnuplot text window. By default, gnuplot on Windows will use the qt terminal. If you prefer, you can change this by setting the GNUTERM environment variable. See below on how to change environment variables. Alternatively, you can add set term windows / wxt / qt to your gnuplot.ini, see `help startup`. Installation ------------ gnuplot comes with its own installer, which will basically do the following, provided you check the corresponding options: * Extract this package (or parts thereof) in a directory of your choice, e.g. C:\Program Files\gnuplot etc. * Create shortcut icons to wgnuplot on your desktop. Additionally, a menu is added to the startup menu with links to the programs, help and documentation, gnuplot's internet site and the demo scripts. * The extensions *.gp, *.gpl, *.plt will be associated to be opened with wgnuplot. * The path to the gnuplot binaries is added to the PATH environment variable. That way you can start gnuplot by typing `gnuplot' or `wgnuplot' on a command line. * gnuplot is added to the shortcuts of the Windows explorer "Run" Dialog. To start wgnuplot simply press Windows-R and execute `wgnuplot'. * You may select your default terminal of preference (wxt/windows/qt) and the installer will update the GNUTERM environment variable accordingly. Alternatively, you can later add set term windows or set term wxt to your gnuplot.ini, see `help startup`. * If you install the demo scripts, the directory containing the demos is included in the GNUPLOT_LIB search path, see below. Customisation: On startup, gnuplot executes the gnuplot.ini script from the user's application data directory %APPDATA% if found, see `help startup`. The wgnuplot text window and the windows terminal load and save settings from/to wgnuplot.ini located in the appdata directory, see `help wgnuplot.ini`. Fonts ----- graphical text window (wgnuplot.exe): You can change the font of the terminal window by selecting "Options..." - "Choose Font..." via the toolbar or the context (right-click) menu. We strongly encourage you to use a modern outline font like e.g. "Consolas" instead of the old "Terminal" raster font, which was the default until gnuplot version 4.4. Make sure to "Update wgnuplot.ini" to make this change permanent. console window (gnuplot.exe): If extended characters do not display correctly, you might have to change the console font to a non-raster type like e.g. "Consolas" or "Lucida Console". You can do this using the "Properties" dialog of the console window. Encodings --------- On Windows, gnuplot version 5.2 or later support command line input using all encodings supported by gnuplot, including UTF-8, see `help encoding`. By default gnuplot will use an encoding which matches the system's ANSI codepage, if supported. We recommend to add `set encoding utf8` to your gnuplot.ini file, see below. Note that while Unicode input on the command line is limited to the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP), scripts may contain all characters (as in previous versions). Localisation ------------ gnuplot supports localised versions of the menu and help files. By default, gnuplot tries to load wgnuplot-XX.mnu and wgnuplot-XX.chm, where XX is a two character language code. Currently, only English (default) and Japanese (ja) are supported, but you are invited to contribute. You can enforce a certain language by adding Language=XX to your wgnuplot.ini. This file is located in your %APPDATA% directory. If you would like to have mixed settings, e.g., English menus but Japanese help texts, you could add the following statements to your wgnuplot.ini: HelpFile=wgnuplot-ja.chm MenuFile=wgnuplot.mnu Please note that currently there's no way to change the language setting from within gnuplot. Environmental variables ----------------------- For a list of environment variables supported, type `help environment` in gnuplot. Below, we only list some important ones: * If GNUTERM is defined, it is used as the name of the terminal type to be used. This overrides any terminal type sensed by gnuplot on start-up, but is itself overridden by the gnuplot.ini start-up file (see `help startup`) and, of course, by later explicit changes. * Variable GNUPLOT_LIB may be used to define additional search directories for data and command files. The variable may contain a single directory name, or a list of directories separated by a path separator ';'. The contents of GNUPLOT_LIB are appended to the `loadpath`, but not saved with the `save` and `save set` commands. See 'help loadpath' for more details. Known bugs ---------- Please see and use http://sourceforge.net/p/gnuplot/bugs/ for an up-to-date bug tracking system. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The gnuplot team, April 2024