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tikz.dev / PGFplots Manual

Manual for Package pgfplots
2D/3D Plots in LA, Version 1.18.1
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgfplots

The Reference

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4.1 dialects: , Cont, plain

The starting point for pgfplots is an axis environment like axis or the logarithmic variants semilogxaxis, semilogyaxis or loglogaxis.

Each environment is available for , Cont and plain :

:

\usepackage{pgfplots} \pgfplotsset{compat=1.18} and

.
\begin{tikzpicture} \begin{axis} ... \end{axis} \end{tikzpicture}
\begin{tikzpicture} \begin{semilogxaxis} ... \end{semilogxaxis} \end{tikzpicture}

Here, the \pgfplotsset{compat=1.18} key should be set to at least version 1.3. Otherwise pgfplots assumes that your document has been generated years ago and attempts to run in backwards compatibility mode as good as it can.

Since is the default for many people, this manual only shows examples. A full document skeleton can be found below this enumeration.

Cont:

\usemodule[pgfplots] \pgfplotsset[compat=1.18] and

.
\starttikzpicture \startaxis ... \stopaxis \stoptikzpicture
\starttikzpicture \startsemilogxaxis ... \stopsemilogxaxis \stoptikzpicture

A complete Cont example file can be found in

doc/context/pgfplots/pgfplotsexample.tex.
plain :

\input pgfplots.tex \pgfplotsset{compat=1.18} and

.
\tikzpicture \axis ... \endaxis \endtikzpicture
\tikzpicture \semilogxaxis ... \endsemilogxaxis \endtikzpicture

A complete plain example file can be found in

doc/plain/pgfplots/pgfplotsexample.tex.

For , a complete example will look somehow like this:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article} % for dvipdfm: % \def\pgfsysdriver{pgfsys-dvipdfm.def} \usepackage{pgfplots} \pgfplotsset{compat=1.6}% <-- moves axis labels near ticklabels (respects tick label widths) \begin{document} \begin{figure} \centering \begin{tikzpicture} \begin{loglogaxis}[xlabel=Cost,ylabel=Error] \addplot coordinates { (5, 8.31160034e-02) (17, 2.54685628e-02) (49, 7.40715288e-03) (129, 2.10192154e-03) (321, 5.87352989e-04) (769, 1.62269942e-04) (1793, 4.44248889e-05) (4097, 1.20714122e-05) (9217, 3.26101452e-06) }; \addplot coordinates { (7, 8.47178381e-02) (31, 3.04409349e-02) (111, 1.02214539e-02) (351, 3.30346265e-03) (1023, 1.03886535e-03) (2815, 3.19646457e-04) (7423, 9.65789766e-05) (18943, 2.87339125e-05) (47103, 8.43749881e-06) }; \legend{Case 1,Case 2} \end{loglogaxis} \end{tikzpicture} \caption{A larger example} \end{figure} \end{document}

If you use latex / dvips or pdflatex, no further modifications are necessary. For dvipdfm, you should use the \def\pgfsysdriver line as indicated above in the examples (see also Section 2.6.3).