Problem solved with babel. I was able to get everything I wanted by piecing together some examples from the mailing list and gnuplot examples/manual around the web.

Thanks!


On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 4:11 PM, John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> wrote:
Nick,

That works from gnuplot. Not sure about orgmode... I tried

#+PLOT: using:"2:3:xticlabels(1)"

which is not working. There's no "using" option mentioned on worg: http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-plot.php

Perhaps it's not possible?

I could try the org-babel method but there seems to be less documentation on this?

John


On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com> wrote:
John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm interested in plotting with non-numeric data for the x component of the data points but don't want to have the gnuplot default of automatic spacing.
> Does anyone know a way to have a word displayed instead of a number but have the words unevenly spaced according to a "hidden value"?
>
> Example:
>
> | 1 | x: where it should be on the scale |  y |
> |---+------------------------------------+----|
> | a |                                  0 | 10 |
> | b |                                 10 | 20 |
> | c |                                 11 | 30 |
> | d |                                 40 | 40 |
>
> Does that make sense? If I just had the table minus the 2nd column, it would space a->d evenly as if they were 0,1,2,3 or something like that. I'd like
> control over their spacing.

Gnuplot can certainly do it, but whether you can convince org-plot/gnuplot
to emit the right incantation, I don't know.

Try the following in gnuplot

       plot 'foo.data' using 2:3:xticlabels(1)

with the data file containing

,----
| a                                  0  10
| b                                 10  20
| c                                 11  30
| d                                 40  40
`----

HTH,
Nick