Combining the tikz package with gnuplot allows you to plot graphs without ever leaving your favorite editor. Adding the tikz package is straightforward as with other LaTeX packages but everytime I run into trouble installing gnuplot. As far as I can tell the following steps are sufficient and necessary to get tikz and gnuplot to play nicely together.
- Download gnuplot and unzip in some folder, e.g., C:\gnuplot. Subsequently add C:\gnuplot\bin\ as a path to your environment variables.
- If you have downloaded the windows version of gnuplot then change the name of the executable from ‘wgnuplot.exe’ to ‘gnuplot.exe’.
- gnuplot may be prevented from writing in the current directory when it is called by tikz. Use the –enable-write18 switch when compiling your document, e.g., pdflatex –enable-write18 foo.tex. If you use WinEdt, the switch can be added under Options-Executions Modes. Note that the first ‘-’ in –enable-write18 should be two ‘-’.
- gnuplot doesn’t seem to like spaces in filenames.
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