By default, the major tick marks along axes are labelled with representations of the values represented at each point, each accurate to the number of significant figures specified using the set numerics sigfig command. These labels may appear as decimals, such as 3.142
3×10^8
1.5×2^8
π
The set xformat command and its companions may also be followed by keywords which control the angle at which tick labels are drawn. By default, all tick labels are written horizontally, a behaviour which may be reproduced by issuing the command:
set xformat auto horizontal
Alternatively, tick labels may be set to be written vertically, by issuing the command
set xformat auto vertical
or to be written at any clockwise rotation angle from the horizontal using commands of the form
set xformat auto rotate 10
Axis labels may also be made to appear at arbitrary rotations using commands such as
set unit angle nodimensionless set xlabel "I'm upside down" rotate unit(0.5*revolution)
Axes may be set to have no textual labels associated with the ticks along them using the command:
set xformat ""
This is particularly useful when compiling galleries of plots using linked axes (see the next section) and the multiplot environment (see Chapter ).
Footnotes