A separate program, gnuplot, is called to generate graphs. Gnuplot is a very full-featured graphing program with myriad options. It is available from www.gnuplot.info (but note that a copy of gnuplot is bundled with the MS Windows version of gretl). gretl gives you direct access, via a graphical interface, to a subset of gnuplot's options and it tries to choose sensible values for you; it also allows you to take complete control over graph details if you wish.
With a graph displayed, you can click on the graph window for a pop-up menu with the following options.
: Save the graph in encapsulated postscript (EPS) format.
: Save in Portable Network Graphics format.
: The graph will appear in iconic form when you select "Icon view" from the Session menu.
: Lets you select an area within the graph for closer inspection (not available for all graphs).
: On the Gnome desktop only, lets you print the graph directly.
: Opens a controller for the plot which lets you adjust various aspects of its appearance.
: Closes the graph window.
If you know something about gnuplot and wish to get finer control over the appearance of a graph than is available via the graphical controller ("Edit" option), you have two further options.
Once the graph is saved as a session icon, you can right-click on its icon for a further pop-up menu. One of the otions here is "Edit plot commands", which opens an editing window with the actual gnuplot commands displayed. You can edit these commands and either save them for future processing or send them to gnuplot (with the "File/Send to gnuplot" menu item in the plot commands editing window).
Another way to save the plot commands (or to save the displayed plot in formats other than EPS or PNG) is to use "Edit" item on a graph's pop-up menu to invoke the graphical controller, then click on the "Output to file" tab in the controller. You are then presented with a drop-down menu of formats in which to save the graph.
To find out more about gnuplot see the online manual or www.gnuplot.info.
See also the entry for gnuplot in Chapter 11 below — and the graph and plot commands for "quick and dirty" ASCII graphs.
[1] | For best results when pasting graphs into MS Office applications, choose the application's "Edit, Paste Special..." menu item, and select the option "Picture (Enhanced Metafile)". |