Show graph on display and save it to file simultaneously in gnuplot
If you want to send a plot both to a file and to an interactive terminal like x11
or wxt
you have the replot
after you changed the terminal
set terminal png
set output 'file.png'
plot sin(x)
set terminal x11
set output
replot
If you don't want to set the x11
terminal explicitely, but rather use the default terminal, whatever it is, you can use the special terminals push
and pop
so save and restore a terminal:
set terminal push
set terminal pngcairo
set output 'file.png'
plot sin(x)
set terminal pop
set output
replot
To make this more transparent and save any image after you plotted it to an interactive terminal you could define a gnuplot script export.gp
which you can then call
and give the output file name as parameter.
The export.gp
script is
set terminal push
set terminal pngcairo
set output '$0'
replot
set output
set terminal pop
which you can then use as
plot sin(x)
call 'export.gp' 'test.png'
Note, however, that the exported file and the plot shown in the interactive window will be different, but if you use wxt
as interactive and pngcairo
or pdfcairo
as output terminals, the chances are quite high, that displayed and exported images are very similar.
With gnuplot 5.0 the qt
and wxt
terminals offer an "Export" button to save exactly the image shown in the window as svg, pdf or png files. Unfortunately, this functionality cannot yet be invoked from a script, i.e. there is no export
command.
A good answer was also given in gnuplot - How can I save a graphics file of a plot that is the same as I designed it in xterminal?.
For x11
terminal one can use
system("xwd -id ".GPVAL_TERM_WINDOWID." | convert xwd:- screenshot.png")
It can be also wrapped into a short cut
bind "Ctrl-c" 'system("xwd -id ".GPVAL_TERM_WINDOWID." | convert xwd:- png:- | xclip -sel clip -t image/png")'
So you plot the image
set term x11
plot sin(x)/x
and then press Ctrl+c in the plot window. Just here, I pasted the image with Ctrl+v:
Unfortunately, it does not work for qt
or wxt
(GPVAL_TERM_WINDOWID
is associated to x11
). They have clipboard buttons, but snapshots are not scriptable.