Offsets

Offsets provide a mechanism to put an empty boundary around the data inside an autoscaled graph. The offsets only affect the x1 and y1 axes, and only in 2D plot commands.

Syntax:

     set offsets <left>, <right>, <top>, <bottom>
     unset offsets
     show offsets

Each offset may be a constant or an expression. Each defaults to 0. By default, the left and right offsets are given in units of the first x axis, the top and bottom offsets in units of the first y axis. Alternatively, you may specify the offsets as a fraction of the total graph dimension by using the keyword "graph". Only "graph" offsets are possible for nonlinear axes.

A positive offset expands the axis range in the specified direction, e.g. a positive bottom offset makes ymin more negative. Negative offsets interact badly with autoscaling and clipping.

To prevent the auto-scaling from further adjusting your axis ranges, it is useful to also specify "set auto fix" or "set xrange noextend".

Example:

     set auto fix
     set offsets graph 0.05, 0, 2, 2
     plot sin(x)

This graph of sin(x) will have a y range [-3:3] because the function will be autoscaled to [-1:1] and the vertical offsets are each two. The x range will be [-11:10] because the default is [-10:10] and it has been expanded to the left by 0.05 of that total range.