Re: using columns for labels

[Giuseppe G. N. A. <Giu...@ct...>]

Hi Dan,

sorry for having been unclear.

> What are you trying to plot?  Column 3 is a number and you want to 
> convert it to text so that the text is plotted on the screen?

Column 3 may be a text string. Say something like:

1 0.088 H
2 0.205 He
3 0.542 Li
4 1.82  Be
5 2.47  B
...

plot 'above.dat' u 1:2 w p t '$3'

(mass densities of the elements, vs the atomic number, with the element's 
name as a label for each point.)

I am aware that in the example above there would not be enough symbols for 
all the elements. Indeed, it would be useful if it could be possible to 
iterate a command like

ex=0.1
ey=0.1

set label '$3' at $1+ex,$2+ey

for each line in above.dat, so that the symbol of the element appears 0.1 
units at the right and 0.1 units at the top of each point in the plot.

Presently, I don't see any other way than generating a file labels.gnu
with the help of some C/Fortran code, and then loading it before plotting
the points with gnuplot.

Thanks again.

Giuseppe.