When passing a remote file like "/ssh:myserver:/myfile.txt" to a gnuplot block as variable the gnuplot process can not access the remote data. An example: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- #+begin_src gnuplot :var data="/ssh:myserver:/myfile.txt" plot data u 1:2 #+end_src --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Attached is a patch, which instead downloads remote files to a unique path and passes this new path to gnuplot. Please let me know if there's something to improve regarding the commit message or patch formatting. Best,