Hello!

This tutorial is intended to get yourself acclimatized with the shell and with gnuplot. Don’t just skim over these notes, but actually perform the examples yourself and experiment (and ask questions if there is something you don’t understand). There is no substitute for hands-on experience.

Extra: Using gnuplot with the epslatex terminal.

Software installation notes

Linux

• All the tools we will be using should be installable via the package manager of your distribution (apt for Debian and Ubuntu, zypper for openSUSE).

Windows

• We recommend installing Cygwin if you don’t have access to a Linux system. This will provide you with many useful command-line tools (including compilers, ssh, and X server), installable via the Cygwin installer.
• For gnuplot, the MinGW version provides a “windows” terminal with better performance when drawing to the screen than the gnuplot provided by Cygwin. (For generating plots into files (postscript, pdf, etc.), this is not important.)
• For viewing Postscript files, gsview is a useful front-end for ghostscript. (You can also use it to view PDF files, but probably Adobe Reader or mupdf are better suited for this.)

MacOS

• For the compiler, install the Xcode package from Apple.
• If you want an X server, install XQuartz. (This will allow you to open windows from remote computers on your desktop.)
• If you want to use gnuplot, you can use Macports to install this. To do so:
  1. Install Xcode from the Mac app store (see above).
  2. Install Macports for your version of the Mac operating system from https://www.macports.org/install.php.
  3. Open terminal.
  4. Check what gnuplot terminals are available (optional) with
     sudo port variant gnuplot.
  5. Install gnuplot with required terminals. For example,
     sudo port install gnuplot +qt5 +x11 +aquaterm +wxwidgets
     will install gnuplot with the QT5, X11, AquaTerm, and WXT terminals.