[Gnuplot-bugs] epslatex

[Alexander v. Z. <kle...@fr...>]

Hey everybody!

I am using gnuplot with the epslatex interface. As I am german I, from
time to time, have to use data with a decimal COMMA "," instead of a
point ".". This means, that I have to use the command

set decimal locale

within gnuplot. Then I can use the data provided in my data files for
plotting.

Then I change my terminal to epslatex and my output to a file:

set terminal epslatex input
set output "someFile.tex"

When I now tried to input my graph in my tex document, I get strange
errors. I then realized that these errors have to do something with the
locale, i.e. with the decimal ",": when i open the "someFile.tex" I can
see the lines

      \expandafter\def\csname LT8\endcsname{\color{black}}%
    \fi
  \fi
  \setlength{\unitlength}{0,0500bp}%
  \begin{picture}(7200,00,5040,00)%
    \gplgaddtomacro\gplbacktext{%
      \csname LTb\endcsname%
      \put(1254,704){\makebox(0,0)[r]{\strut{}-2,5}}%

There is the setlength command prividing an argument "0,0500bp" which
should actually be "0.0500bp" and the begin{picture} which provides two
decimal numbers "7200,00,5040,00" which should actually be
"7200.00,5040.00"! Additionally sometimes in the eps-file written by
gnuplot there are sometimes commas which have to be replaced by points.

This is a problem which only occurs if I change the input decimal.

To solve this problem, I tried to set the output decimal

set decimal "."

but this doesn't change a thing. The only workaround I found was to
change my datafiles. But this unfortunately is not the way which I would
recommend. Especially if users (german) want to user windows they are
exporting their data e.g. from Excel to a textfile, Excel writes
decimal-"," instead of ".". Is there something I missed or does there
exist already a solution for that?

It would be very useful and I could spread gnuplot more if this
behaviour would be fixed. I really can't teach my gf (who is now
learning LaTeX and KOMA already) gnuplot AND manipulating eps ;)

Thanks for your great work, gnuplot provided already for some papers
wonderful graphs!

With the best regards, hear you soon and in the hope to help development
getting further,

Alex