[Gnuplot-info] Rotating X-Axis Labels

[Rich S. <rsh...@ap...>]

   I'm essentially new to gnuplot although I used it lightly a dozen or so years
ago. I think it's the only tool that will allow me to plot a time series
with dates as the labels on the x-axis tics.

   While my script will be tuned to make it more presentable, the immediate
need is to learn how to turn a date (such as 2009-05-13) 90 degrees
counterclockwise and limit the number of labels on the x-axis range.

   The plot is daily precipitation at a monitoring station over three years.
The code is:

set datafile missing "NA"
set xdata time
set timefmt "%Y-%m-%d"
set format x "%d-%m-$Y"
set nokey
set xlabel "Date" rotate by 270
set ylabel "Precipitation (in)"
set title "Daily Precipitation 2008-2010: CC-OR-8"
set size ratio -2

plot "cocorahs.dat" u 1:($2) w boxes

   The first few lines of the data file are:

2008-01-01 NA
2008-01-02 0.06
2008-01-03 0.60
2008-01-04 0.27
2008-01-05 0.56
2008-01-06 0.20
2008-01-07 0.44

   I can provide the entire data file (all 920 lines, 15K) if desired. Please
point me in the right direction for adjusting the x-axis labels so they are
both readable and complete (rather than the current "05-13-%Y".

Rich