Gnuplot x tic labels overlap

charts, gnuplot

Solution

To (effectively) plot every nth label, you can use something like:

plot "action.dat" using 2:xtic(int($0)%3==1 ? strcol(1):'') with boxes ls 1 title "First title"

This will actually plot every label, but the ones that aren't the n'th label will just be plotted as empty strings ...

Problem

I am drawing a gnuplot chart from datafile with such format: ``` 01 value_1_1 value_2_1 02 value_1_1 value_2_1 ... 01 value_1_n value_2_n ``` using that command: ``` plot "action.dat" using 2:xtic(1) with boxes ls 1 title "First title",\ "action.dat" using 3:xtic(1) with boxes ls 2 title "Second title"; ``` X tic labels are loaded from the first column. When terminal is too small, labels start to overlap. How can I hide x tic label if it overlaps previous label? Or, at least, how can I draw only n-th label? I've tried to do something like that ``` set xtics 10 rotate by -90 ``` but failed.

Original source