Response below/inline for email Chris Green wrote:
> (original email sent 6 Feb 2026 at 09:26)
>
> The trouble with gnuplot (and many others) is that they are aimed at
> plotting functions rather than raw data.
Respectfully, I disagree completely with this view. gnuplot has very
extensive data handling capabilities and almost 100% of my use is with
large data sets.
And many of my own uses include time as the x axis, for instance.
I've attached a simple example plot generated using gnuplot with this
script (as an org src block with the raw data as an org table but could
just have as easily been a data file):
#+begin_src gnuplot :var data=readings[3:-1,1:-1] :file annualprojection.png
reset
set format x '%d %b %Y'
set key bottom right
set style data linespoints
set timefmt "%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S"
set xdata time
set xlabel 'Date'
# last argument is number of seconds for tic increment
set xtics out nomirror 19353600
set ylabel 'Projected annual consumption [kWh]'
set yrange [0:10000]
set ytics out
plot data using 1:8 pt 7 title 'Total average projected',\
'' using 1:9 pt 4 with points title 'Total recent projected', \
'' using 1:7 pt 5 title 'Rate 2 (day)',\
'' using 1:4 pt 9 title 'Rate 1 (night)'
#+end_src
--
Eric S Fraga via gnus (Emacs 31.0.50 2025-11-19) on Debian trixie/sid
