[Gnuplot-info] Plot with many x tics: how to skip some?

[Paolo P. <pao...@to...>]

Hi,

as the subjects says i've a plot with a lot x tics, and the output is 
garbled, is there a way to skip some of them?

Here is my gnuplot script:

set title "Email Processing Status"
set term png size 1024 768
set xlabel "Time" offset 0,-2
set ylabel "Volume"
set key invert reverse Left outside
set style data histogram
set style histogram rowstacked
set style fill solid border -1
#set xdata time
#set timefmt "%H:%M"
#set format x "%01H %02M"
#set xrange ["00:00":"23:59"]
#set xtics "00:00", 600, "23:59"
set xtic rotate by 90
plot '$DATAFILE' using 2:xtic(1) title "Done", \
        '' u 3:xtic(1) title "Running", \
        '' u 4:xtic(1) title "Ready", \
        '' u 5:xtic(1) title "Queued"

and here is the data file:

13:00        1965942        142846        0        618324
13:20        2086281        168174        0        528615
13:40        2236936        159883        0        422962
14:00        2378720        151422        4958        468820
14:20        2509835        154974        0        708086
14:40        2657699        146929        4988        565078
15:00        2805058        143064        4989        421594
15:20        2883667        169049        0        321989
15:40        2992881        168951        0        317069
16:00        3127238        120896        4634        294658
16:20        3269671        150755        4951        330317
16:40        3390164        160732        0        394797
17:00        3536742        123940        3452        345381
17:20        3633127        131688        4950        268028
17:40        3777765        158817        0        254588
18:00        3840300        156367        0        252872
18:20        3854284        166587        0        397645
18:40        3945939        167211        0        444801
19:00        4128396        122230        4993        302734
19:20        4212272        159910        0        186171
19:40        4352849        156593        4479        150646
20:00        4514529        98026        4930        123554
20:20        4576299        159961        0        136804
20:40        4678907        76802        0        602926
21:00        4755709        83130        0        519796
21:20        4829059        83941        0        445635
21:40        4908008        84857        0        365770
22:00        4987874        89838        0        280923
22:20        5072721        89313        0        196601
22:40        5152202        78643        0        127790
23:00        5186610        78640        0        93385
23:20        5235760        83555        0        39320
23:40        5314400        44235        0        0
[snip]

and here is the resulting plot: http://people.tomato.it/piso/foo.png.

As you can see, on the x axis i've time samples and i would like to have 
1 tic printed every 6 hours or so and (if possible) the name of the day 
printed below the x axis
every time it wraps 24hours.

I've already tried to play around with 'xdata time', but i couldn't get 
anything usable...

bye,
P.

ps please cc: me as i'm not subscribed to the mailing list...