fast plotting of streaming data - best approach?

[Alexander Poddey]

Hi all,

I have some data which comes streaming in (at e.g. 1000 samples /s).
I hold the old data (at least a part of it) and want to plot lets say the last 
5000 data points, updated every 1/10 s.

Calling plot takes a few seconds to bring up the plot (debian squeeze, octave 
3.2.4, gnuplot 4.4) - the naive approach to re-call plot with the new data is 
too slow.

Which would be the best strategy to do this?

Thanks
Alex