The title of this question may sound a bit crazy, but: How do I correctly read and interpret gnuplot documentations like the one for border or the one for xtics?
For example, in the first link it says
In detail, 5#5integer6#6 should be the sum of the appropriate entries from the following table:
In the second one it says
rotate by 5#5ang6#6 asks for rotation by 5#5ang6#6 degrees, supported by some terminal types.
Can someone explain to me how to interpret 5#5 or 6#6 correctly? Is the documentation just broken and 5#5 means <, while 6#6 means >? This would not make sense to me, because in the documentation for xtics it also says {axis 4#4 border}, so it must have something to do with the number, yet I am too blind to see it.
Additional: This is not critical, I can figure out the usage from the "Syntax" given (e.g. I currently use set xtics rotate by 45 right in my plot), yet I just would like no know what I'm missing here.
Actually, those are not supposed to be there. That is likely because of some internal code in the documentation source that got carried over to the html output. Drop the 5#5, 6#6, and so on and it will read correctly. For example, the first one should read
In detail, integer should be the sum of the appropriate entries from the following table.
and the second one should read
rotate by ang asks for rotation by ang degrees, supported by some terminal types.
You can also get documentation from gnuplot itself with the help command. For example, to look up the border topic, use help border or ?border.