Other new features

For features added since version 6.0, see development.

• Time units for setting major and minor tics. Both major and minor tics along a time axis now accept tic intervals given in units of minutes/hours/days/weeks/months/years. See set xtics, set mxtics time.
• The character sequence $# in a using specifier evaluates to the total number of columns available in the current line of data. For example "plot FOO using 0:(column($# - 1))" plots the last-but-one field of each row.
• keyword binvalue=avg plots the average, rather than the sum, of binned data.
• set colorbox bottom places a horizontal color box underneath the plot rather than a vertical box on the right.
• Improved rendering of intersecting pm3d surfaces - overlapping surface tiles are split into two pieces along the line of intersection so that tiles from one surface do not incorrectly protrude though the other surface.
• User-controlled spotlight added to the pm3d lighting model. See set pm3d spotlight.
• New options to force total key width and number of columns. See key layout.
• set pm3d border retrace draws a border around each pm3d quadrangle in the same color as the filled area. In principle this should have no visible effect, but it prevents some display modes like glitchy pdf or postscript viewers from introducing aliasing artifacts.
• set isotropic adjusts the axis scaling in both 2D and 3D plots such that the x, y, and z axes all have the same scale.
• Change: Text rotation angle is not limited to integral degrees.
• Special (non-numerical) linetypes lt nodraw, lt black, lt background See special_linetypes.
• Data-driven color assignments in histogram plots. See histograms colors.
• The position of the key box can be manually tweaked by specifying an offset to be added to whatever position the program would otherwise use. See set key offset.
• plot .. if (<expression>) New filter for plot and splot commands to select only those input lines that match a target expression. See filters if.