Via Jean-Philippe Paradis I found this gnuplot cookbook companion for eazy-gnuplot. I really like gnuplot and its ability to produce a large variety of excellent plots. Unfortunately, I don’t use it often enough to internalize its documentation and it’s always a chore to figure out how to get even a simple graph plotted.
Eazy-gnuplot is a Common Lisp interface to gnuplot that seems easier to use than gnuplot itself. Take a look at the companion to see how easy and natural it is to use the eazy-gnuplot package. My usual strategy to interface some language to a package like gnuplot would be to write a small library that generates gnuplot input and then arrange to run to gnuplot automatically. That’s pretty much what eazy-gnuplot does so you can just install the package and use it.
As a final word, the cookbook companion mentions the Gnuplot Cookbook. That book deals with gnuplot itself rather than a Lisp interface to it. It’s a bargain at $5 for a digital copy. I got myself a copy so that the next time I have to use gnuplot directly I have a better way than wading through the voluminous documentation trying to find the proper magic spell.