time series - Gnuplot: x-axis narrow label spacing in timeseries plot -

gnuplot tends clutter x-axis in timeseries plots. see following image example of labels narrow spacing:

is there way make gnuplot avoid such narrow spacing? preferably should done within gnuplot script generate plot.

i generated plot following gnuplot script , file of random data:

set terminal png set output "plot.png"  set timefmt "%s" set xdata time  set xlabel "time" set ylabel "random data"  set boxwidth 600 set style fill solid 0.5  set key below  plot "random.dat" using 1:2 w boxes title ".60" 

note: using gnuplot 4.6.

edit

1. writing less times should sufficient this.
2. an example file produce plot available @ http://pastebin.com/w0kia7dt

you can use set xtics mark less points on x-axis. first , last argument must in same format times, in case %s, or seconds since unix epoch. middle argument number of seconds.

for example, mark every 8 hours, rather every 4 above, this:

hours = 8 start = "1393934400" end = "1394107200" set xtics start, hours * 3600, end 

you can obtain start , end values using date command in terminal

date -d "2014-03-04 08:00" +%s 

you them script using gnuplot system command

end = system("date -d '2014-03-06 12:00' +%s") 

see help set xtics time_axis more details.