The plot styles met so far plot data as solid bars, with left, right and top sides all drawn. Data may also be plotted with steps, with the left and right sides of each bar omitted. Some examples are shown in FiguresĀ 4.2(d), (e) and (f). As is illustrated in these panels, three flavours of steps are available, exactly as in Gnuplot:
plot 'data.dat' with steps plot 'data.dat' with fsteps plot 'data.dat' with histeps
When using the steps plot style, the data points specify the right-most edges of each step. When using the fsteps plot style, they specify the left-most edges of the steps. The histeps plot style works rather like the boxes plot style; the interfaces between the steps occur at the horizontal midpoints between the data points.