Gnuplot filledcurves with palette

Question

I have been trying to change the fillstyle for the filledcurves option in gnuplot so that the fill colour represents the difference between the two curves on a 2-dimensional

Answer 1

AFAIK, this is still not implemented in gnuplot. You can however have a dirty(*) work around by overlaying several transparent filled curves.

E.g.,

max_color=1
max_diff=0.5
N_col=6
TRSP="E0"
HOTCOL="FF0000"
COLDCOL="0000FF"
RGBA_HOT="#".TRSP.HOTCOL
RGBA_COLD="#".TRSP.COLDCOL
RGB_HOT="#".HOTCOL
RGB_COLD="#".COLDCOL
#red(val) = (val < 0 ? abs(1+val/max_color) : 1)
#green(val) = (1 - abs(val)/max_color)
#blue(val) = red(-val)
#rgb(val) = 65536*int(255*red(val)) + 256*int(255*green(val)) + int(255*blue(val))
fhot(x) = 0.1*exp(-((x-400)/200)**2) + 0.8*exp(-((x-2000)/300)**2)
fcold(x) = 0.25*exp(-((x-700)/100)**6)+ 0.4 - (2e-4*(x-2500))**2
plot [400:2600] for [thr=0:N_col] '+' using (((fhot($1)-fcold($1))/max_diff*N_col>thr)?$1:1/0):(fhot($1)):(fcold($1)) with filledcurves lc rgb RGBA_HOT title '',\
     for [thr=0:N_col] '+' using ((-(fhot($1)-fcold($1))/max_diff*N_col>thr)?$1:1/0):(fhot($1)):(fcold($1)) with filledcurves lc rgb RGBA_COLD title '',\
     '' using 1:(fhot($1)) with lines lw 4 lc rgb RGB_HOT t 'Hot',\
     '' using 1:(fcold($1)) with lines lw 4 lc rgb RGB_COLD t 'Cold'

Adjust N_col and TRSP to change the gradient: number of filled curves overlaid and transparency of each (more curves implies to be closer to max transparency FE).

(*) This is less dirty in case the information you want to plot is a discrete variable, e.g. the number of datasets available at given abscissae.