need some advice on x y plot

[Kent Johnson]

nephish at xit.net wrote:
> how ?
> i have tried to use unix timestamps, and i have also tried with
> DateTime objects
> do i need to use a scale that isn't linear (default in most) ?
> how do i putt this off ?

Here is some code that works for me. It plots multiple datasets against time. The input data looks like this:
2005-04-04 16:00:00 141.154.195.129 - W3SVC1 SP6018ASP2 208.254.37.191 443 GET /rkadqsr/newskills/newskills.cfm selectedTab=1 200 0 53440 599 1594 HTTP/1.1 adqsr.skillport.com Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+5.1) CookiesEnabled=1;+ASPSESSIONIDACTSSRAT=MCNLNLGADPOFGFKAHJHLDDKG;+CFID=785030;+CFTOKEN=27203160 https://adqsr.skillport.com/rkadqsr/login/login.cfm
2005-04-04 16:00:00 208.254.38.216 - W3SVC1 SP6018ASP2 208.254.37.191 443 POST /_rkadqsrBackend_od_cgi/aiccisapi.dll - 200 0 372 274 4547 HTTP/1.0 adqsr.skillport.com aiccisapi - -
2005-04-04 16:00:00 208.254.38.240 - W3SVC1 SP6018ASP2 208.254.37.191 443 POST /_rkadqsrBackend_od_cgi/aiccisapi.dll - 200 0 372 3019 250 HTTP/1.0 adqsr.skillport.com aiccisapi - -

import datetime, time
import Gnuplot

dataPath = 'ex05040416.log'

datasets = {}
startTime = None

f = open(dataPath)

for line in f:
    try:
        dat, tim, c_ip, cs_username, s_sitename, s_computername, s_ip, s_port, \
            cs_method, cs_uri_stem, cs_uri_query, sc_status, sc_win32_status, sc_bytes, \
            cs_bytes, time_taken, cs_version, cs_host, cs_User_Agent, cs_Cookie, cs_Referer = line.split()
    except ValueError:
        print "Can't parse", line
        continue

    tim = time.mktime(time.strptime(dat+' '+tim, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"))
    delay = int(time_taken)
    
    if startTime is None:
        startTime = tim
    
    tim -= startTime
    
#    print tim, delay
    datasets.setdefault(sc_status, []).append([tim, delay])

g = Gnuplot.Gnuplot(debug=1)

plotter = g.plot
for key, values in datasets.items():
    plotter(values)
    plotter = g.replot
    
raw_input('Please press return to continue...\n')