Graph Formatting Tools For Octave

Question

I know that Matlab allows for you to format the graph after its created through the interface. However there isn't the same features in Octave. Is there a tool that goes between Octave and GnuPlot? If there isn't such a tool, is there a tool that will generate the formatting options?

I've heard of EasyPlot, but it isn't free.

Answer 1

Octave uses Gnuplot as the default plotting backend, though it supports other options. It also supports most of the graph functions that Matlab does, including ones that change the plot after it was created.

Answer 2

I've used GNU plot in the past for some visualizations. I didn't find any front end interface to set things like colors or labels but it was easy enough to set some basic things on the command line. This site helped me out: http://t16web.lanl.gov/Kawano/gnuplot/intro/plotcalc-e.html

Answer 3

I've discovered there are some formatting options on the GNU Plot graph after it has been generated through octave. If you press 'm' it's then possible to right click and get a menu with choices to format the plot (line styles/colour/background/print). However, for me it crashes a lot and changing the values doesn't seem to have much effect.

There is some other functionality by using these key presses..

• m - allow menu on right-click
• a - zoom to full window
• p - previous zoom level
• r - overlay ruler
• g - overlay grid
• b - toggle border
• 1 - toggle output reading format
• 5 - display radius measure tool (when ruler is displayed)
• 7 - format aspect ratio (useful to get square plots to not distort scale)

These are just the ones I've found by randomly testing the keyboard (!), so this is hardly exhaustive. But hope that helps.