Googling yields that it is not a bug but something which is not possible because of the inability to specify the correct x values for multiple columns.
About a year ago, when Gnuplot 4.1 was not available yet for my distro and hence the multicolumn not available, I solved it like this:
I created multiple input files, one for each range. In the first column of each file I specified the time in seconds. Then in the second (and third and so on) I applied an offset to the seconds by adding and substracting a number of seconds which the bars had to shift to the left or the right. For example, if you have 10 days in your plot, you might want to shift each bar by a quarter day, or 21600 seconds, 43200 seconds etc.
Eventually, this became my plot file:
Code:
set xdata time
set timefmt "%s"
set format x "%b %y"
set xtics 2628000
set boxwidth 0.15 relative
set style fill solid 1.00 border
set xtics rotate
set grid ytics
set bmargin 7
set label "graph created with gnuplot 4.0" at screen 0.6,0.05
set yrange [97.5:100.5]
set ylabel "beschikbaarheid (%)"
set xlabel "maand" 0,-1.4
set title "$1"
set terminal png small size 640,480 \
xffffff x000000 x404040 \
xe00000 x00e000 x0000e0 \
xe0e000 xe000e0
set output "$0.png"
set key left
plot "$0_tx1.plt" using 1:2 title 'PH1' with boxes, "$0_tx2.plt" using 1:2 title 'PH2' with boxes, "$0_tx3.plt" using 1:2 title 'ABB' wi
th boxes, "$0_tx4.plt" using 1:2 title 'TH1' with boxes, "$0_tx5.plt" using 1:2 title 'TH2' with boxes
$0_tx2.plt are the names of the data files, I used the "$0" syntax because I passed the file name externally. Furthermore this plot shows data for a year, hence the large value for xtics. Below each set of bars the date appear in "month year" format.
http://pdis.rnw.nl/~hansl/links/mr_J5Rli8.png
As you can see, some bars are omitted, that is on purpose as no data is available. All the bars remain in the same offset position, the gaps are not closed.
This is the contents of the data files:
Code:
1182348000 98.9798
1185026400 99.3491
1187704800 99.673
1190296800 99.6147
1192975200 98.9541
1195567200 100
1198245600 99.648
1200924000 99.565
1203429600 99.7407
1206108000 0
1208700000 0
1211378400 0
1213970400 0
Code:
1182798000 99.1756
1185476400 99.9569
1188154800 100
1190746800 0
1193425200 0
1196017200 0
1198695600 0
1201374000 0
1203879600 0
1206558000 0
1209150000 0
1211828400 0
1214420400 0
Code:
1183248000 99.9055
1185926400 99.9212
1188604800 99.9036
1191196800 99.9234
1193875200 99.9461
1196467200 99.975
1199145600 99.9478
1201824000 99.912
1204329600 99.9177
1207008000 99.7549
1209600000 99.8632
1212278400 99.9578
1214870400 99.9025
Code:
1183698000 0
1186376400 99.8479
1189054800 99.9781
1191646800 99.9121
1194325200 99.4444
1196917200 99.9573
1199595600 99.9575
1202274000 99.4175
1204779600 99.8023
1207458000 99.8723
1210050000 99.8026
1212728400 99.9485
1215320400 99.9825
Code:
1184148000 0
1186826400 0
1189504800 0
1192096800 99.9133
1194775200 99.9541
1197367200 99.8715
1200045600 99.9925
1202724000 99.9754
1205229600 99.901
1207908000 99.6784
1210500000 99.8914
1213178400 99.9476
1215770400 99.9542
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