Plotting boxes
Gnuplot's box style is similar to a bar chart, with each value plotted as a box extending up from the axis. You can have the boxes filled with patterns, solid colors, or leave them empty.
This style is commonly used either as a type of histogram (covered later in this chapter) or as a way to compare a set of disparate items. The following figure plots boxes using the fill pattern:
How to do it…
It just takes the following script to get the previous figure:
set style fill pattern plot [-6:6] besj0(x) with boxes, sin(x) with boxes
How it works…
The first command tells gnuplot to fill the boxes with a fill pattern, cycling through the patterns available on the selected output device for each plot on the graph. The second command plots the two specified functions using the boxes style, which draws a box from the x-axis to the y value for each point.
There's more…
You can specify empty boxes with set style fill empty or a solid color with set style fill solid, and of course you can select the fill style explicitly with set style fill pattern n, where n is any integer associated with a fill style in the selected terminal.
