Gradient colored curve in Gnuplot(1)

Last time we talked about how to draw a gradient colored curve. We realized it by cutting the total curve into n segment and plot the n segment using different colors. This time we talk about another method.

We know that at a special viewpoint a surface can appear like a line. We also know that gunplot can plot colored surface with pm3d plotting style. So we may expand our line to a surface. Plot the surface with pm3d. View it in a special viewpoint. Now we come to realize our idea.

reset
set term png
set output "gradient_colored_curve2.png"
set isosample 200,2 
#As along y-axis the surface has a constant value,
#the samples along y-axis can set to be a small value.
set palette rgbformulae 7,5,15
unset colorbox
set xyplane relative 0
set xtics offset 0,-1   
#putting xtics label 1 character lower makes the plotting nicer
unset ytics #ytics is not necessary
unset border #the border will plot manually
#plot axes manually
set arrow 1 from graph 0,0,0 to graph 1.1,0,0
set arrow 2 from graph 0,0,0 to graph 0,0,1.1
#plot xtics manually
set for [i=-10:10:5] arrow from i,0,-1.0 to i,0,-0.95 nohead
set view 89.5,0 #map the 3-d surface to coordinate plane
splot sin(x) w pm3d notitle

Note that the view should be set to a value near "90,0" but not exactly "90,0" (if view exactly equals "90,0", "linwidth" of the curve is 0), here we choose "89.5,0". Compared to the previous one, this method takes less time. The output picture file is shown below.

Gradient colored curve plotted by gnuplot