Features introduced in version 5.0

• The dot-dash pattern of a line can now be specified independent of other line properties. See dashtype (p. ), set dashtype (p. ), set linetype (p. )
• The default sequence of colors used for successive elements in a plot is more easily distinguished by users with color-vision defects. The color sequence is under user control (see set colorsequence (p. )). This mechanism can also be used to generate monochrome plots (see set monochrome (p. )). In previous gnuplot versions monochrome could only be selected when changing the current terminal via set terminal.
• New plot styles with parallelaxes, with table, and labeled contours.
• New data pre-processing filter for monotonic cubic splines (see smooth mcsplines (p. ))
• Text markup now supports bold and italic font settings in addition to subscript, superscript, font size and other previously available properties. Enhanced text mode is now enabled by default. See enhanced text (p. ). Text elements can be enclosed in a box (see set style textbox (p. )).
• Interactive terminals support hypertext labels that only appear when the mouse hovers over the label's anchor point.
• New coordinate system (Degrees, Minutes, Seconds). See set xtics geographic (p. ).
• The default format for axis labels is "% h" ("$%h$" for LaTeX terminals). This format is like the C standard format %g except that the exponential term, if present, is written using a superscript. E.g. 1.2 x 10^5 rather than 1.2E05.
• Command scripts may place in-line data in a named data block for repeated plotting. See inline data (p. ).
• Support for 32-bit Alpha channel + RGB color #AARRGGBB. See colorspec (p. ).
• Support for HSV color space via a translation function hsv2rgb(H,S,V).
• Secondary axes (x2, y2) may be locked to the primary axis via a mapping function. In the simplest case this guarantees that the primary and secondary axis ranges are identical. In the general case it allows you to define a non-linear axis, something that previously was possible only for log scaling. See set link (p. ).
• Each function in a plot command may optionally be preceded by a sampling range. This does not affect the overall range of the plot, only the range over which this function is sampled. See plot (p. ) and piecewise.dem.
• If the external library libcerf is available, it is used to provide complex math routines cerf, cdawson, erfi, faddeeva, and the Voigt profile VP(x,sigma,gamma).
• The import command attaches a user-defined function name to a function provided by an external shared object (support is operating-system dependent). A template header and example source and make files for creating a suitable external shared object are provided in the demo collection.
• Previous commands in the history list of an interactive session can be reexecuted by number. For example, history !5 will reexecute the command numbered 5 in the history list.
• Bit-shift operators 5#55#5 and 4#44#4.
• Shell invocation of gnuplot can pass parameters to a gnuplot script. gnuplot -c scriptfile.gp ARG1 ARG2 ARG3 ...