Tics

Control of the major (labelled) tics on all axes at once is possible with the set tics command.

Fine control of the major (labelled) tics on all axes at once is possible with the set tics command. The tics may be turned off with the unset tics command, and may be turned on (the default state) with set tics. Similar commands (by preceding 'tics' by the axis name) control the major tics on a single axis.

Syntax:

     set tics {axis | border} {{no}mirror}
              {in | out} {scale {default | <major> {,<minor>}}}
              {{no}rotate {by <ang>}} {offset <offset> | nooffset}
              { font "name{,<size>}" }
              { textcolor <colorspec> }
     unset tics
     show tics

All specified options apply to all axes, i.e., x, y, z, x2, y2, and cb.

axis or border tells gnuplot to put the tics (both the tics themselves and the accompanying labels) along the axis or the border, respectively. If the axis is very close to the border, the axis option will move the tic labels to outside the border in case the border is printed (see set border (p. )). The relevant margin settings will usually be sized badly by the automatic layout algorithm in this case.

mirror tells gnuplot to put unlabelled tics at the same positions on the opposite border. nomirror does what you think it does.

in and out change the tic marks to be drawn inwards or outwards.

With scale, the size of the tic marks can be adjusted. If 5#5minor6#6 is not specified, it is 0.5*5#5major6#6. The default size 1.0 for major tics and 0.5 for minor tics is requested by scale default.

rotate asks gnuplot to rotate the text through 90 degrees, which will be done if the terminal driver in use supports text rotation. norotate cancels this. rotate by 5#5ang6#6 asks for rotation by 5#5ang6#6 degrees, supported by some terminal types.

The defaults are border mirror norotate for tics on the x and y axes, and border nomirror norotate for tics on the x2 and y2 axes. For the z axis, the default is nomirror.

The 5#5offset6#6 is specified by either x,y or x,y,z, and may be preceded by first, second, graph, screen, or character to select the coordinate system. 5#5offset6#6 is the offset of the tics texts from their default positions, while the default coordinate system is character. See coordinates (p. ) for details. nooffset switches off the offset.

set tics with no options restores to place tics inwards. Every other options are retained.

See also set xtics (p. ) for more control of major (labelled) tic marks and set mxtics for control of minor tic marks. These commands provide control at a axis by axis basis.