3.6.3 Steps

As an alternative to solid boxes, a graph may also be plotted with “steps”; see Panels (a), (c) and (d) of Figure 3.6 for examples. As is illustrated by these panels, three flavours of steps are available (exactly as in gnuplot):

plot 'datafile' with steps 
plot 'datafile' with fsteps 
plot 'datafile' with histeps

When using the steps plot style, the datapoints specify the right-most edges of each step. By contrast, they specify the left-most edges of the steps when using the fsteps plot style. The histeps plot style works rather like the boxes plot style; the interfaces between the steps occur at the horizontal midpoints between the datapoints.