#### 3.25.71 tics

Control of the major (labelled) tics on all axes at once is possible with the ‘set tics‘ command.

Fine control of the major (labelled) tics on all axes at once is possible with the ‘set tics‘ command. The tics may be turned off with the ‘unset tics‘ command, and may be turned on (the default state) with ‘set tics‘. Similar commands (by preceding ’tics’ by the axis name) control the major tics on a single axis.

Syntax:

          set tics {axis | border} {{no}mirror}
                   {in | out} {scale {default | <major> {,<minor>}}}
                   {{no}rotate {by <ang>}} {offset <offset> | nooffset}
                   {left | right | center | autojustify}
                   { format "formatstring" } { font "name{,<size>}" }
                   { textcolor <colorspec> }
          set tics {front | back}
          unset tics
          show tics

The options in the first set above can be applied individually to any or all axes, i.e., x, y, z, x2, y2, and cb.

Set tics ‘front‘ or ‘back‘ applies to all axes at once, but only for 2D plots (not splot). It controls whether the tics are placed behind or in front of the plot elements, in the case that there is overlap.

‘axis‘ or border tells ‘gnuplot‘ to put the tics (both the tics themselves and the accompanying labels) along the axis or the border, respectively. If the axis is very close to the border, the ‘axis‘ option will move the tic labels to outside the border in case the border is printed (see border). The relevant margin settings will usually be sized badly by the automatic layout algorithm in this case.

‘mirror‘ tells ‘gnuplot‘ to put unlabelled tics at the same positions on the opposite border. ‘nomirror‘ does what you think it does.

‘in‘ and ‘out‘ change the tic marks to be drawn inwards or outwards.

With ‘scale‘, the size of the tic marks can be adjusted. If <minor> is not specified, it is 0.5*<major>. The default size 1.0 for major tics and 0.5 for minor tics is requested by ‘scale default‘.

‘rotate‘ asks ‘gnuplot‘ to rotate the text through 90 degrees, which will be done if the terminal driver in use supports text rotation. ‘norotate‘ cancels this. ‘rotate by <ang>‘ asks for rotation by <ang> degrees, supported by some terminal types.

The defaults are ‘border mirror norotate‘ for tics on the x and y axes, and ‘border nomirror norotate‘ for tics on the x2 and y2 axes. For the z axis, the default is ‘nomirror‘.

The <offset> is specified by either x,y or x,y,z, and may be preceded by ‘first‘, ‘second‘, ‘graph‘, ‘screen‘, or ‘character‘ to select the coordinate system. <offset> is the offset of the tics texts from their default positions, while the default coordinate system is ‘character‘. See ‘coordinates‘ for details. ‘nooffset‘ switches off the offset.

By default, tic labels are justified automatically depending on the axis and rotation angle to produce aesthetically pleasing results. If this is not desired, justification can be overridden with an explicit ‘left‘, ‘right‘ or ‘center‘ keyword. ‘autojustify‘ restores the default behavior.

‘set tics‘ with no options restores to place tics inwards. Every other options are retained.

See also ‘set xtics‘ for more control of major (labeled) tic marks and mxtics for control of minor tic marks. These commands provide control for each axis separately.