Re: gnuplot settings in Octave

[Ben Abbott]

On Nov 2, 2011, at 1:57 AM, Ron Crummett wrote:

> Hello all - 
> 
> Once upon a time I was able to edit my .Xdefaults file to configure settings 
> for Gnuplot. I could change the default plot window size, the 
> background/axes/plot colors, maybe more. And whatever I had in there worked 
> for Gnuplot in general, whether called from Octave or not.
> 
> That was a few years ago; now it seems that my defaults are overridden by 
> Octave. Does that mean I can set my preferences somewhere in Octave?
> 
> And what about LaTeX commands in the title? I thought this had been resolved 
> but when I tried to do 
> 
> title('\pi');
> 
> all I got was a 'p' at the top. Is there somewhere to set a default font?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> -Ron

You can modify the default figure properties in your ~/.octaverc file.

To see what the figure properties are type ...

        set (gcf)

For the axes ...

        set (gca)

To change the background color of the figure ...

        plot (0:10)
        set (gcf, 'color', 'b')

For the axes ...

        set (gca, 'color', 'r')

It does look like there is a font problem with gnuplot (no Symbol font?). The 
gnuplot page below may be of some help.

        http://www.gnuplot.info/faq/faq.html#SECTION00091000000000000000

If you are using the x11 terminal (that is the default), then gnuplot uses the 
x11 font server. If you are using wxt, then gnuplot is using fontconfig. You 
can try changing your gnuplot terminal to see if that fixes the problem.

Assuming you are using x11, If you want to switch to wxt, then ...

        close all
        setenv ("GNUTERM", "wxt")

However, the best solution is to make sure that your x11 font server and 
fontconfig both are aware of the fonts you'd like to use.

Ben