Line thickness in gnuplot

[Jason Christian]

I am using gnuplot to plot various series of data. I produce
encapsulated
postscript, which is then typeset using latex, and printed on a
high-resolution
typesetter.

Using the default line types, series 2 and series 3 are almost
indistinguishable: I think it's a medium dash and a short dash. To
better identify the lines, one suggestion is to use linespoints; I hate
to do this because a lot of points make the plots ugly (IMO, YMMV!). A
second solution is to tweak the line types... so now I have series 2
using lines 2 and series 3 using lines 6... that's a dash, and
dot-dash.

That's ok, but what I would *really* like to do is to specify the line
widths.
In a perfect world, I could do this for other elements...like the axes,
for example. But at the very least, is there any way to get at the
width of the plot lines??

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Christian University of California, Davis
ja...@primal.ucdavis.edu Agricultural and Resource
Economics
Office:(916)752-1357 FAX:(916)752-5614 Davis, CA 95616

[Johannes Faerber]

Jason Christian wrote:
>
> I am using gnuplot to plot various series of data. I produce
> encapsulated
> postscript, which is then typeset using latex, and printed on a
> high-resolution
> typesetter.
>
> Using the default line types, series 2 and series 3 are almost
> indistinguishable: I think it's a medium dash and a short dash. To
> better identify the lines, one suggestion is to use linespoints; I hate
> to do this because a lot of points make the plots ugly (IMO, YMMV!). A
> second solution is to tweak the line types... so now I have series 2
> using lines 2 and series 3 using lines 6... that's a dash, and
> dot-dash.
>
> That's ok, but what I would *really* like to do is to specify the line
> widths.
> In a perfect world, I could do this for other elements...like the axes,
> for example. But at the very least, is there any way to get at the
> width of the plot lines??

You can edit the postscript code. It's not very complicated. Look for
a line defining line width:

/gnulinewidth 5.000 def

and add something like e.g.
/gnulinewidth2 25.000 def

Then look for the line-style definition:

/PL { stroke gnulinewidth setlinewidth } def
/LT0 { PL [] 0 1 0 DL } def
/LT1 { PL [4 dl 2 dl] 0 0 1 DL } def
...

and add a new style definition using your previously defined line width
(e.g. /PL2) and modify the linestyle LT# you want (e.g. /LT1)
/PL { stroke gnulinewidth setlinewidth } def
/PL2 { stroke gnulinewidth2 setlinewidth } def
/LT0 { PL [] 0 1 0 DL } def
/LT1 { PL2 [4 dl 2 dl] 0 0 1 DL } def

works for me :-)
(btw: the part in [] defines the dash-style of the line)

regards,
Johannes

--
Institute of Communication Networks and Computer Engineering (IND)
University of Stuttgart
Pfaffenwaldring 47 Tel: +49-711-685 7968
D-70569 Stuttgart Fax: +49-711-685 7983
Johannes Faerber fae...@ind.uni-stuttgart.de

[crawford richard]

In message-Id: <33DD2B...@primal.ucdavis.edu>
Jason Christian <ja...@primal.ucdavis.edu> wrote:

> I am using gnuplot to plot various series of data. I produce
> encapsulated
> postscript, which is then typeset using latex, and printed on a
> high-resolution
> typesetter.
>
> Using the default line types, series 2 and series 3 are almost
> indistinguishable: I think it's a medium dash and a short dash. To
> better identify the lines, one suggestion is to use linespoints; I hate
> to do this because a lot of points make the plots ugly (IMO, YMMV!). A
> second solution is to tweak the line types... so now I have series 2
> using lines 2 and series 3 using lines 6... that's a dash, and
> dot-dash.
>
> That's ok, but what I would *really* like to do is to specify the line
> widths.
> In a perfect world, I could do this for other elements...like the axes,
> for example. But at the very least, is there any way to get at the
> width of the plot lines??

Well, in gnuplot 3.6 you can indeed set the line width for some terminals,
including postscript...

Dick Crawford, aka rccra...@lanl.gov