Thanks for showing that gnuplot can produce a text plot. I got overwhelmed by the documentation about multitude of terminals; did not find that myself earlier.

my phd was a loooong gnuplot script

and here is the time-honored japhy - my first one!

use GD::Simple;
use Chart::Gnuplot;

my $image = GD::Simple->new(400, 40);
$image->trueColor(1);
$image->bgcolor('white');
$image->fgcolor('black');
$image->font('courier');
$image->fontsize(20);
$image->moveTo(1,21);
#$image->string("Just Another Perl Hacker");
$image->string("just another perl hacker");

my $W = $image->width();
my $H = $image->height();

my ($x, $y, $r, @onX, @onY);
for ($x=0; $x<$image->width(); $x++) { for ($y=0; $y<$image->height();
+ $y++) {
    $r = $image->getPixel($x,$y);
    if( $r > 0 ){
        push @onY, $x;
        push @onX, $y;
    }
}}

my $dataSet = Chart::Gnuplot::DataSet->new(
    xdata => \@onX,
    ydata => \@onY,
    title => undef,
    style => "dots",
);
# Create chart object and specify the properties of the chart
my $chart = Chart::Gnuplot->new(
    title => undef,
    xlabel => undef,
    ylabel => undef,
    terminal => 'dumb size 40,180',
);
# Plot the data set on the chart
$chart->plot2d($dataSet);
[download]

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[download]

bw, bliako

> and here is the time-honored japhy

You got me all excited because legendary Big Apple Perl Monk japhy is one of my favourite monks - and a golfing buddy from the early years. Good save though because seeing your beautiful and original japh cheered me up after my initial japhy-disappointment . :)

In addition to golf, japhy liked japhs:

• japhy's Obfuscation Review (from 2000)
• 7 Stages of Regex Users by japhy
• Re: $|-- rocks. (Japhy explains where behaviour of --$| is documented)
• Re^5: Homework Golf (35) (japhy shows his knowledge of early Perl history, attributing the x= idiom to L.Wall)

Update: See also Flipin good, or a total flop? by GrandFather