GnuPlot 6.0 adds set term block to use Unicode block or Braille characters for your dumb terminals that support them.

These two plots are of AirPassengers.csv, the top using Braille, the bottom using term “dumb”. The Braille is so much better.

The GnuPlot mirror at GitHub is a little behind the SourceForge one. You'd want at least tag 6.0.0. You can click “Download Snapshot” directly from there. Then unzip it and go into the directly, and make sure to configure with flag –with-bitmap-terminals.

./prepare
./configure --with-bitmap-terminals
make
sudo make install

./prepare
./configure --with-bitmap-terminals --with-qt=no
make
sudo make install

If prepare complains that aclocal is not found, you also need…

sudo apt-get install automake
# sudo apt-get install pkg-config (Maybe this was only for QT?)

It may say “libgd-based png jpeg gif sixel: no (requires libgd, see config.log)”, but svg will work. If you get the failure, try:

sudo apt-get update  # Need to avoid 404s from package repos
sudo apt install libgd-dev

Inspired from this StackOverflow answer. I gave up on getting QT working.

brew install readline
brew install pkg-config
# ... Get the sources per instructions above ...
./prepare
./configure --disable-silent-rules --prefix=/opt/homebrew/opt/gnuplot --with-readline=/opt/homebrew/opt/readline --with-cairo --with-qt=no --with-x --with-bitmap-terminals
make
sudo make install