Syntax:
set xtics {axis | border} {{no}mirror} {{no}rotate} { <incr> | <start>, <incr> {,<end>} | ({"<label>"} <pos> {,{"<label>"} <pos>}...) } set noxtics show xtics
The same syntax applies to ytics, ztics, x2tics and y2tics.
axis or border tells gnuplot to put the tics (both the tics themselves and the accompanying labels) along the axis or the border, respectively. mirror tells it to put unlabelled tics at the same positions on the opposite border. nomirror does what you think it does. rotate asks gnuplot to rotate the text through 90 degrees, if the underlying terminal driver supports text rotation. norotate cancels this. The defaults are border mirror norotate for tics on the x, y, x2, and y2 axes. For the z axis, the the {axis | border} option is not available and the default is nomirror. If you do want to mirror the z-axis tics, you might want to create a bit more room for them with set border.
The positions of the tics may be specified in either of two forms:
The <start>, <incr>, <end> form specifies that a series of tics will be plotted on the axis between the values <start> and <end> with an increment of <incr>. If <end> is not given, it is assumed to be infinity. The increment may be negative. If neither <start> nor <end> is given, <start> is assumed to be negative infinity, <end> is assumed to be positive infinity, and the tics will be drawn at multiples of <step> — there will be a tic at zero (if it is within the plotted range). If the axis is logarithmic, the increment will be used as a multiplicative factor.
Examples:
Make tics at 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, ..., 9.5, 10.
set xtics 0,.5,10
Make tics at ..., -10, -5, 0, 5, 10, ...
set xtics 5
Make tics at 1, 100, 1e4, 1e6, 1e8.
set logscale x; set xtics 1,100,10e8
The ("<label>" <pos>, ...) form allows arbitrary tic positions or non-numeric tic labels. A set of tics is a set of positions, each with its own optional label. Note that the label is a string enclosed by quotes, and may be a constant string, such as "hello", or contain formatting information for the tic number (which is the same as the position), such as "%3f clients". See set format for more information about this case. The label may be made empty by specifying it as an empty string. If no string is given, the default label (numerical) is used. In this form, the tics do not need to be listed in numerical order.
Examples:
set xtics ("low" 0, "medium" 50, "high" 100) set xtics (1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024) set ytics ("bottom" 0, "" 10, "top" 20)
In the second example, all tics are labelled. In the third, only the end tics are labelled.
Tics will only be plotted when in range.
Minor (unlabelled) tics can be added by the set mxtics command.
In case of timeseries data, position values must be given as quoted dates or times according to the format timefmt. If the <start>, <incr>, <end> form is used, <start> and <end> must be given according to timefmt, but <incr> must be in seconds. Times will be written out according to the format given on "set format", however.
Examples:
set xdata time set timefmt "%d/%m" set format x "%b %d" set xrange ["00/12":"06/12"] set xtics "01/12", 172800, "05/12"
set xdata time set timefmt "%d/%m" set format x "%b %d" set xrange ["00/12":"06/12"] set xtics ("01/12", "" "03/12", "05/12")Both of these will produce tics "Dec 1", "Dec 3", and "Dec 5", but in the second example the tic at "Dec 3" will be unlabelled.