gnuplot-mode

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#+TITLE gnuplot-mode

• Introduction Gnuplot is an extremely useful program -- it's fast, easy to use and great for getting a look at your data before starting a more sophisticated analysis. You can run gnuplot interactively at a command prompt, but I generally find it easier to write a plot script instead.

  In order to edit these scripts a little more comfortably, I wrote this major mode for emacs. It offers syntax hilighting and basic indentation, as well as a command to plot the file. You can run the plot command either directly (by =M-x gnuplot-run-buffer=), or with the (customizable) shortcut =C-c C-c=.

  Here is a screenshot showing the basic syntax hilighting. Note that it warns you about spaces at the ends of lines, which cause gnuplot to crash, but are otherwise hard to spot.

  #+ATTR_HTML: alt="syntax-hilighting" title="syntax-hilighting" width="586" height="531" [[file:images/gnuplot-syntax-hilight.png]]

  The mode runs gnuplot entirely in the background. If gnuplot reports an error, it creates a buffer called "gnuplot errors" and brings it to the front to show you what happened.

  #+ATTR_HTML: alt="error" title="error" width="586" height="531" [[file:images/gnuplot-errors.png]]

  This uses the emacs =compile= system, so commands like =next-error= and =previous-error= will work as expected.

  You can also send commands to gnuplot using =C-c C-b= (send buffer to gnuplot) or =C-c C-r= (send region to gnuplot), but the error reporting isn't as helpful with these functions.

  This mode was inspired by the one written by Bruce Ravel (available [[http://cars9.uchicago.edu/~ravel/software/gnuplot-mode.html][here]]), but I think it's much simpler to use -- it runs gnuplot non-interactively, and only has one command to remember.

• Installation If you like, you can download the file [[https://github.com/mkmcc/gnuplot-mode][here]]. Once this file is somewhere visible to emacs, you can add the following to your =.emacs= to make it work.

  #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp ;; make sure file is visible to emacs (if needed) (add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/your/lisp/files")

  ;; load the file (require 'gnuplot-mode)

  ;; specify the gnuplot executable (if other than /usr/bin/gnuplot) (setq gnuplot-program "/sw/bin/gnuplot")

  ;; automatically open files ending with .gp or .gnuplot in gnuplot mode (setq auto-mode-alist (append '(("\.\(gp\|gnuplot\)$" . gnuplot-mode)) auto-mode-alist)) #+END_SRC

  Better yet, use MELPA! If you add MELPA to your package archives using the following, you can install gnuplot mode with a simple =M-x package-install gnuplot-mode=.

  #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (require 'package) (add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/") t) #+END_SRC

  I hope you find this useful. Please let me know if you encounter any problems with the mode, or if you have any suggestions for improving it.