plotting tables

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

I'm trying to get my head around plotting data from org tables, for use
in LaTeX exports. I've been looking at these two pages:

http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-plot.html
http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/ob-doc-gnuplot.html

As far as I can tell, there are two general approaches. One is an org
table with some #+PLOT declarations, and when I call `org-plot/gnuplot'
on it, gnuplot processes the table and shows it to me. Presumably I can
make it save to a file instead, I haven't investigated that yet.

The other approach seems to be using a named table, and then a gnuplot
source block that accepts the table data as a variable. In this case
you're writing an actual gnuplot script, rather than feeding gnuplot
options into a #+PLOT line.

My questions:

1. Are these really mutually incompatible approaches, as they appear to
be?

2. What's my best option if I want the following scenario: I start with
an org file containing an org table, call `org-latex-export-to-pdf' on
that file, get a coffee, and come back to find a nice pdf containing
just the plotted graph (no table). Can someone show me just the barest
example?

3. I've been learning the tikz LaTeX package and am very impressed. Has
anyone used tikz/pgfplots with org?


In return, I promise to add a very hand-holdy explanation to worg,
provided that there isn't already one there that I missed.

Thanks,
Eric