[Tex/LaTex] GNUplot and LaTeX (linestyles)

gnuplot

I've just started using GNUplot to create graphs. I've been using the epslatex terminal and my issue is, when I create my graph in the wxt terminal, and then replot it in the epslatex terminal, the linestyle changes, even if I never explicitly specified a linestyle. Basically, in the wxt terminal, then curve is solid; however, in the epslatex terminal, the curve is dashed.

I read somewhere that changing terminals can give different linestlyes, and that one is supposed to issue the command 'test' to see the various styles; however, when I try to do 'test' in the epslatex terminal, it tells me that "epslatex terminal cannot write to standard output" (which makes sense I guess). I'm just wondering where I can find what the different linestlyes correspond to in the epslatex terminal.

Also, as a bit of a sub-question, I'm wondering if my approach is any good… To create the graphs, I create it the epslatex terminal, then I convert the eps file to a pdf file so that I can use pdflatex. Is there a better way to do this (perhaps GNUplot can create the pdf for me)?

Best Answer

To use the epslatex terminal with the test command, you first need to specify where to write the output. You can do that by issuing set out "<filename>.tex, then test, and then set out to close the file. You'll then get a <filename>.tex and a <filename>.eps. By using \input{<filename>} in a LaTeX document, you'll get the following output (assuming you used set terminal epslatex color):

As you can see, the epslatex terminal uses dashed line styles by default. You can change to solid colored lines by using set terminal epslatex color solid:

For comparison, here's the wxt output:

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[Tex/LaTex] Gnuplot subdirectory not found using epstopdf

Gnuplot's epslatex terminal generates an encapsulated postscript file containing the graph, and a tex file containing a sequence of commands to import the graph and add labels, etc. The problem occurs when TeX tries to import the graph (converted to pdf or not). The \includegraphics command that is contained within mygraph.tex does not contain the subdirectory name in its argument, so TeX looks in the 'usual' places, including the directory containing your main document, but not the subdirectory. So the answer to your first question is 'yes' (but see edit below).

In contrast, gnuplot's latex terminal generates a tex file containing a sequence of commands that draws everything using the picture environment. There is no second file to find, and no problem occurs.

EDIT

Gnuplot can issue shell commands, so you can use a string replacement utility to fix the problem. Using sed, a simple gnuplot script would look like this.

set term epslatex
set output 'temp.tex'
plot x**3
set output #Closes the temporary output files.
!sed 's|includegraphics{temp}|includegraphics{graphdir1/mygraph}|' < temp.tex > mygraph.tex
!epstopdf temp.eps --outfile='mygraph.pdf'

This way, you don't have to edit 'mygraph.tex' after running gnuplot, because it will contain \includegraphics{graphdir1/mygraph} in place of \includegraphics{temp}, thanks to sed. As a bonus, the pdf version of the graph is generated automatically.

[Tex/LaTex] gnuplot epslatex pdflatex

There are several tools for EPS to PDF conversion: at least ps2pdf, epspdf and epstopdf. It can be verified that the first one of these (which uses GhostScript) creates a PDF of page size (say, A4 or US Letter) and not content size, while the other two work as expected. Some internet digging shows that GhostScript accepts the -dEPSCrop option, which clips the picture to its bounding box.

So, use either of epspdf, epstopdf or ps2pdf -dEPSCrop to properly convert the picture.

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