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From: "Nasser M. Abbasi" <nma@12000.org>
Newsgroups: comp.graphics.apps.gnuplot
Subject: How to re-use the same output device/xterm each time gnuplot is invoked?
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:07:46 -0700
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Hello;

I am on linux, and I am very new to gnuplot, but I am
trying to see if I can use it to make animation
by calling it from Fortran program.

The setup is like this:


   PROGRAM ----> gnuplot

Where the actual call inside the program follow this logic

LOOP
    -- update data, create new data.txt file on disk  from this data
    CALL system('gnuplot batch.plt')  -- call to make new plot
END LOOP

and batch.plt would start as

#!/usr/bin/gnuplot -persist
... load data from data.txt  and make plot
# EOF

The above works OK, but the problem is that each call
makes a NEW xterm on top of the earlier one.

So if I run the loop for 10 time, I end up with 10 plots
on 10 different windows. If I remove -persist, then each plot
window disappear, and new one is created, etc... and one is not able
to see the animation.

What I want is to reuse the same window, basically erase the previous
plot (if any) on it, and make a new one on the same plot/window, to
obtain the effect of animation.

But I am not sure how to do this. I need some kind of window ID/device ID,
to tell gnuplot to reuse that when starting a new process, since each call
to gnuplot from the program will create a new process.

So, basically I want the gnuplot script to do something like

--------------------
IF window_ID allready exist, then send all output to it
else create a new window and assign it window_ID
make plot to window_ID
---------------------

Any ideas how to do this, or even if it possible?

thanks
--Nasser